Paul McCartney is releasing a special edition of The Boys of Dungeon Lane, which will include three previously unreleased songs and a new version of his duet with fellow surviving Beatle Ringo Starr, “Home to Us.” The set comes out digitally on Oct. 7.
For the new rendition of “Home to Us,” the Beatles mates switch their original parts for the new “flip mix” version on the song that reflects on their early days in Liverpool. The three additional new songs are called “City Fox,” “One Night Stand,” and “Chelsea Boots.”
The Boys of Dungeon Lane (Special Edition) physical version features a cover culled from a silkscreened collage by Kate Gibb, which houses more than 100 images from McCartney’s own personal collection. It will be offered as a limited edition 2LP on orange and blue marble vinyl, out Dec. 9, as well as on CD and it’s available pre-order.
Rolling Stone’s review of the album calls The Boys of Dungeon Lane a “warm, nostalgic late-career masterpiece.”
“There are several songs about his early years in Liverpool, including a good-old-days duet with his buddy Ringo Starr; the album’s title references a street in the neighbourhood where both he and George Harrison grew up,” the review reads. “Overall, there’s the sense of a legend looking back on a life well spent. This isn’t necessarily a new theme for McCartney, who’s been singing about what he once called his ever-present past for years now. But the autumnal vibe is more pronounced than ever, and there’s an unusual poignance to songs like ‘Days We Left Behind,’ where he shuffles through some old black-and-white photos and finds only “smoky bars and cheap guitars/But nothing built to last.”
“This is very much a memory song for me. The album title … comes from a lyric in this track. I was thinking just that, about the days I left behind and I do often wonder if I’m just writing about the past but then I think how can you write about anything else?” McCartney said in a statement. “It’s just a lot of memories of Liverpool. It involves a bit in the middle about John and Forthlin Road which is the street I used to live in. Dungeon Lane is near there. I used to live in a place called Speke which is quite working class. We didn’t have much at all but it didn’t matter because all the people were great and you didn’t notice you didn’t have much.”
The Boys of Dungeon Lane Special Edition Track List
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1. “As You Lie There”
2. “Lost Horizon”
3. “Days We Left Behind”
4. “Ripples in a Pond”
5. “Mountain Top”
6. “Down South”
7. “We Two”
8. “Come Inside”
9. “Never Know”
10. “Home to Us”
11. “Life Can Be Hard”
12. “First Star of the Night”
13. “Salesman Saint”
14. “Momma Gets By”
15. “City Fox”
16. “One Night Stand”
17. “Chelsea Boots”
18. “Home to Us – Flip Mix”
From Rolling Stone US
