• Paul McCartney shared a funny story about George Harrison getting shocked on a teenage hitchhiking trip to Wales
• The pair hitched a ride on a slow-moving electric milk float, and Harrison’s zipper made contact with the battery
• McCartney, 83, told the story on The Rest Is History podcast, hosted by Tom Holland
• The incident inspired a song on his upcoming album The Boys of Dungeon Lane, out later this month
• Harrison’s widow Olivia remembers the story differently — and McCartney says that’s exactly the point

Paul McCartney has a lot of Beatles memories. But the one he shared on The Rest Is History podcast this week might be the most unexpectedly hilarious — and it involves a very slow vehicle, a very unfortunate zipper, and a very shocked George Harrison.

Speaking with host Tom Holland on the May 15 episode, McCartney looked back on a teenage hitchhiking trip the two took together while making their way toward Wales. Short on options, the young future rock legends accepted a ride on an electric milk float — one of those slow-rolling delivery vehicles that were a common sight on British streets at the time.

“Those were the only vehicles we knew that were electric, [and this one] went about four miles an hour,” McCartney said. “But it was a lift, so we were quite happy.”

The driver sat on one side. A large battery sat in the middle. And Harrison, unluckily, sat directly on top of it.

The Moment Everything Went Wrong

For a while, everything was fine. Then the metal zipper on the back pocket of Harrison’s jeans made contact with part of the battery.

“Bang! He jumps up,” McCartney recalled, mimicking Harrison’s yelp of “Ahhh!”

The result? What McCartney described as “a great big zip tattooed into his bum” — a temporary burn mark left behind by the jolt. The 83-year-old clearly still finds it funny decades later.

McCartney also mentioned that he recently brought the story up with Harrison’s widow, Olivia Harrison — and got a surprise. She remembered hearing the incident differently. In her version, it was McCartney who got shocked, not Harrison.

Rather than getting defensive about it, McCartney found the whole thing kind of beautiful. “I think it’s amazing the way memory does that. It can just morph,” he said.

A Story That Became a Song

The hitchhiking mishap didn’t just stay a dinner party anecdote. McCartney says it found its way into his music — specifically into a track on his upcoming album The Boys of Dungeon Lane, due out later this month. It’s a reminder that for McCartney, life and songwriting have always been inseparable. Even a painful moment on a four-mile-an-hour milk truck can become something worth keeping.

Harrison, of course, went on to become one of the most beloved musicians of the 20th century alongside McCartney, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr in The Beatles. He died in November 2001. McCartney has said that a fir tree — a gift from Harrison — sits somewhere he sees it every day, a quiet, living reminder of his old friend.

It’s the kind of detail that makes a funny story feel like something more. Two teenage boys on a slow electric truck headed to Wales, not yet famous, just happy to have a ride — and one of them about to get the shock of his life.

The post Paul McCartney’s Wild Teen Hitchhiking Story About George Harrison appeared first on Cream.

• Paul McCartney appeared as musical guest on SNL’s Season 51 finale, hosted by Will Ferrell on May 16
• He performed three songs — a rare SNL privilege — including new single “Days We Left Behind” and Wings classic “Band on the Run”
• McCartney surprised the audience with a bonus “Coming Up” performance during the closing credits, with the cast dancing side-stage
• Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers played drums on both main-stage performances
• His new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, drops May 29 — his 18th solo record

Paul McCartney didn’t just close out SNL’s Season 51 — he took it over. The Beatles legend returned to Studio 8H on Saturday night as musical guest for the Will Ferrell-hosted finale, delivering three full performances, sketch comedy, monologue time, and a surprise encore during the goodnights that nobody saw coming. He’s done SNL five times now. He keeps finding new ways to make it feel like the first.

His opening number was “Days We Left Behind,” the lead single from his upcoming album The Boys of Dungeon Lane, out May 29. The song is reflective and a little bittersweet — somewhere between “Things We Said Today” and “Auld Lang Syne” — and it landed exactly the way you’d expect a Paul McCartney song about the passage of time to land when performed live by Paul McCartney. Emotional. Quietly devastating. Beautiful.

Then came the gut-punch.

Most people assumed the second slot would bring another new track. Instead, McCartney and his band launched into “Band on the Run” — the full, five-minute version of the 1974 Wings classic that hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The audience audibly gasped. That sound — a room full of people catching their breath at once — is maybe the best review a song can get.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=BxHS7_YdEt0%3Ffeature%3Doembed%26enablejsapi%3D1

Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers was on drums for both performances, which made the whole night feel like a bit of a rock-and-roll family reunion. Smith also appeared in Ferrell’s monologue, playing into the long-running joke about the two men’s uncanny resemblance to each other.

The Sketch, the Goodnights, and the Encore Nobody Expected

McCartney didn’t spend the rest of the night just watching from the wings. He showed up in a sketch alongside Ferrell and Marcello Hernández, playing mechanics who take advantage of a clueless Mikey Day — a bit that was considerably filthier than anything you’d expect from a knight of the British Empire. He was, by all accounts, very funny.

But the real moment came at the end. After Ferrell wrapped up the goodnights — thanking the night’s cameos, including Molly Shannon, Aziz Ansari, and Smith — he ushered McCartney back to the side stage. What followed wasn’t a wave and a bow. McCartney kicked into “Coming Up,” his 1980 Hot 100 No. 1, while the SNL cast danced around him in the wings. The closing credits rolled. Nobody left.

Reports from the room suggest the band kept going even after the cameras cut — playing at least two more songs for the studio audience once the broadcast ended. The man turns 84 next month. He outlasted the show.

It’s worth putting this in context: three songs is genuinely rare for an SNL musical guest. The standard is two. Lorne Michaels doesn’t hand out extra slots lightly, and giving McCartney the full five-minute “Band on the Run” — a song that would normally be considered too long for the format — says everything about where he sits in the SNL universe. This was his fifth appearance as musical guest, with previous slots in 1980, 1993, 2010, and 2012. He last performed on the show more than 13 years ago. Last year, he closed out SNL’s 50th anniversary special with a medley of the final three songs on Abbey Road.

Lorne knows what he has. And Saturday night, so did everyone watching.

The post Paul McCartney Closes SNL With Surprise Encore appeared first on Cream.

• Paul McCartney, 83, says he refuses fan selfies because they make him feel “like a monkey” on display
• He revealed even Oprah Winfrey was stunned by his “radical” no-photos stance
• McCartney admitted he’s baffled by influencer culture and “people who don’t seem particularly talented” becoming famous
• The comments came ahead of his new album The Boys of Dungeon Lane, out May 29

Paul McCartney has been one of the most recognizable faces on the planet for over 60 years — and he’d very much like to keep some of that life to himself, thank you very much. The Beatles legend, 83, opened up on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast with hosts Richard Osman and Marina Hyde about why he flatly refuses to pose for fan photos, why influencer culture leaves him scratching his head, and what it actually feels like to be that famous for that long.

The selfie thing, he says, comes down to something deeply personal. “As time’s gone by, things have changed. Now — phones. So if I meet someone, they’re reaching for their phone, and I say: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t do pictures,'” McCartney explained. “And that is radical these days.”

Radical enough, apparently, to catch Oprah Winfrey off guard. “I told that to Oprah — I’m name-dropping now — and she said: ‘You don’t do pictures?’ I said: ‘No.’ She said: ‘Why?’ I said: ‘I don’t want to.’ It’s as simple as that.”

The Monkey on the Beach

But McCartney doesn’t just leave fans with a flat no. He goes deeper — and he’s got a whole story ready for the occasion. It involves a beach in Saint-Tropez, a stranger with a monkey, and a pay-per-photo setup that, to McCartney, captures exactly what he’s trying to avoid.

“I go into this long explanation about how, down on the south coast of France in Saint-Tropez, there’s a man on the beachfront who has a monkey, and you pay to have your photo taken with the monkey,” he said. “I really do not want to feel like that monkey. And when I take a picture with someone, I do feel like him. I’m not me anymore — I’m suddenly something else.”

It’s not about ego, he insists. It’s the opposite. “Something important to me, something related to your question about innocence and staying normal, would be lost. The minute I start thinking I’m something above myself, I won’t like me. It’s very important for me to just be me.”

He also pointed out that celebrity attitudes toward fame have shifted dramatically over the decades. When the Beatles first broke through, nobody was complaining about being recognized. “When you’re first famous, you love it — because it’s what you were trying to achieve. So something goes well, people in the street recognise you, and you love it. There was none of this, ‘Oh, people are bothering me’ — that’s a modern affliction. We loved it. And you learn to deal with it.”

On Influencers: “People Who Don’t Seem Particularly Talented”

From there, McCartney turned his attention to the broader cultural shift around fame — and he didn’t exactly hold back. Asked what baffles him most about the 21st century, he landed squarely on influencer culture.

“I think a lot of this influencer stuff — I just don’t really get it, because I’m not that generation,” he said. “But you can’t help seeing it. My wife will be looking at Instagram and showing me something, and then one of those will come on.”

“I think it’s funny — and I suppose it always happened — but people who don’t seem to be particularly talented are incredibly famous. Billions of hits and views.”

He caught himself mid-thought, aware of how it might land. “You’ve got to be careful about saying that, because it makes you sound very old-fashioned. Which I am.”

Fair enough. But it’s hard to argue with a man who co-wrote “Hey Jude.”

New Music, Old Memories

The podcast appearance comes as McCartney gears up to release The Boys of Dungeon Lane on May 29 — his first solo album in five years. The 14-track record draws on memories from his formative years in Liverpool, including early adventures with his late bandmates George Harrison and John Lennon, long before any of them were famous.

He named the album after Dungeon Lane, a spot near his childhood home on Forthlin Road in the Liverpool suburb of Speke. The first taste of the project arrived Friday with “Home To Us,” a duet with Sir Ringo Starr — the last surviving Beatle alongside McCartney — a collaboration that already feels like something fans will hold onto for a long time.

McCartney has described the inspiration behind the album simply: “a lot of memories of Liverpool.” Given everything he shared on the podcast — the desire to stay grounded, to stay himself, to not become the monkey on the beach — it sounds like the record is very much about remembering who he was before the world decided who he’d be.

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