Paul McCartney said revisiting the first song he ever wrote made him realize it had a 'much deeper meaning'
- Paul McCartney reflected on writing his first song while answering questions on his website.
- "I thought I was happily writing a little pop song," he said of "I Lost My Little Girl."
Paul McCartney recently reflected on "I Lost My Little Girl," the first song he ever wrote at age 14, while answering fans' questions on his official website.
Asked about "lyrics or memories that came back" while writing his new book, "The Lyrics," McCartney said revisiting his first song "kind of turned into a therapy session."
"I thought I was happily writing a little pop song when I was 14, but if you look at the timing of it I had just lost my mother," he said, according to The Independent.
"When you think about that, the song seems to have a much deeper meaning that I hadn't noticed before: the possibility of it being subliminally written about her," he continued.
McCartney's mother, Mary McCartney, died in 1956 at the age of 47. She suffered an embolism after undergoing surgery for breast cancer.
The 79-year-old musician began performing the song on radio, TV and in concert in the '70s. It was officially released on his 1991 live album, "Unplugged (The Official Bootleg)," from his acoustic performance on "MTV Unplugged."
As McCartney has previously said, he wrote The Beatles' hit "Let It Be" after a dream he had in the '60s, in which his mom offered "reassuring" words of wisdom.
But he revealed on his website that "some of the lyrics" from the band's beloved song "Yesterday" may have also been subconsciously inspired by his mother.
"The whole process of analyzing the songs took me to stuff that I hadn't thought of recently, not because I didn't want to, but because there was never a clue, never a prompt, never a trigger to think about those things," he wrote.
"That was the interesting thing about making this book. I had to go back in my memory to see how I'd written that song, why I'd written it and any interesting side stories," he continued. "It became about more than just the songs: it became the memories that the songs evoked."
McCartney's new book "The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present," which features his reflections on 154 songs throughout his career, is now available.