Music & Memories

 

June 18^th, 2026

This past week or two I’ve been listening to Paul McCartney’s new album “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” while driving around in my car.  I didn’t realize when I initially sat down to write this that today is his birthday - 84 years old!  With each listen I’m drawn a little deeper into it and find myself surfing the memories with Paul on waves of music.  It helps that I read Ian Leslie’s “Paul & John” two months ago followed by Jonathan Gould’s “Can’t Buy Me Love”.  The first was recently published and got great reviews, so I asked for it for my birthday.  I chose to read “Can’t Buy Me Love” because of Ian Leslie’s assertion in his book that it was the best of the Beatle’s biographies.

My initial impression of the album was “Boy, Paul’s voice sounds like an old guy singing” (duh).  It is restrained, if not strained at times, and a bit warbly, but if I don’t try to compare it to his younger singing self I can appreciate it.  It helps that it is saturated with nostalgia which makes his musical narration more poignant.

My daughter has been with me on a few of these trips and she has been getting drawn into the music of The Beatles this past year.  I kind of picked up on it by some the questions she was asking and her ability to identify who was singing at any one time on a Beatles song.  She has also been able to recognize some of their influences on songs by contemporary artists that she likes.  The kicker was last week when I went to her room to ask her a question and found “Paul & John” sitting on her dresser looking a little rough around its edges.  I asked her about it and she said she’d had it in her backpack - a small price to pay for her burgeoning interest.

Yesterday I was going to pick her up from field hockey practice and my mind made an interesting connection while listening.  I was getting a familiar vibe, having listened to it a few times through already, and it hit me that it reminded me of Neil Young’s “Prairie Wind”.  That is an album I bought and listened to when I was deployed to Iraq in 2006.  Upon my return home my son was drawn to it and we had parts of it memorized with hand gestures we’d come up with to act out the lyrics.  He was 3 to 4 years old at the time.  Like “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” it is a nostalgic trip through Neil’s childhood and hits a lot of the same beats.  The main difference is that Neil’s voice was still Neil’s voice, love it or hate it (I love it).  

This connection makes me happy.  It ties together some of my own recent forays into writing stories from my youth and ties me to my children who are living out their own young lives many years yet removed from any true nostalgia.  They are looking forward and I am looking back and we are somehow meeting in the middle.

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