Did he have a rationalization for why it was a good idea to put Hitler on there?

"No. It's a laugh. We're putting famous people on the cover: 'Hitler! He's famous!' And it was like, 'Yeah, but John, we're trying to put heroes on the cover, and he's not your hero. Winston Churchill's your hero, John.' He was a big fan of Winston. So he was just fucking about. That was John. He was very witty, very wonderful, and would like to push the envelope, and it was entertaining to be around someone like that. These are cool people. But you can't always do everything they suggest."12

One of McCartney's several homes is in the English county of East Sussex, close to the south coast. Nearby, he also has his own recording studio, situated in an old windmill on top of a hill with bracing views out over the sea. Right now, everyone is mingling around its tiny kitchen. McCartney, who is just back from a holiday in the Greek islands with his wife,13 listens to a ticket-sales update from his British publicist, Stuart Bell, for some big shows he is playing later this year.

"'Sold out,' best two words in the English language," McCartney tells me.

Come now, I say, there are others.

"When you're about to tour, there aren't."14 He reconsiders. "'Stark naked' is even better."

McCartney leans over a table laden with vegetarian sandwiches and snacks, lifts a corner of the clear wrap off a plate of coffee-cake slices, and tries to extract a segment so that it will look as though he hasn't. "I'm going to not have this," he declares, mostly talking to himself. "I'm going to so not have this that you won't even see me not have it. There we are. See!"

A few minutes later, he holds a pink rose under my nose—one he has just picked from the bush outside, a rose that is officially called the McCartney Rose.15 (Smells pretty good.) He then points to a 3-D printout of his head someone sent him from Brazil that's sitting on a shelf next to a smaller figurine that I can't quite properly see.

"I'm really embarrassed by this," he says. "Especially as it's alongside Mozart."

"I notice," observes Abe Laboriel Jr., the drummer in his band, "one head is a little bigger than the other."

And so the midafternoon break goes, until McCartney straightens up and suggests to the others, "Shall we go and play some more?" There is also a shed-like outbuilding on this property—not a big one, but just big enough for McCartney and his band, crammed together, to rehearse in. That is what they are here to do today.

Coat, $1,785, by Stella McCartney. Sweater, $1,495, by The Row. Pants, $70, by Levi's. Suit, $2,695, by Giorgio Armani. Shirt, $425, by Giorgio Armani. Shoes, his own, by Stella McCartney.

You'd have to be completely immune to the past 55 years of music history, and to Paul McCartney's pivotal role in it, not to be somewhat mesmerized by watching him, just a few feet away, rehearse his way over several hours through 30 or so songs. Mostly, they are re-familiarizing themselves with old favorites, which they generally try to play as closely to the original records as possible, but they're also still figuring out a handful of new songs, and occasionally they throw in fairly obscure cover versions—for instance, "Miss Ann," a song from Little Richard's first album that the Beatles would sometimes play in their pre-fame days. There are moments that seem even more surprising. When I walk in at the beginning of the rehearsal day, they are in the middle of a long instrumental jam, one that seems very loosely based around the verse chords of the Wings song "Letting Go," during which McCartney noodles and solos on electric guitar16 at great length in a way that you never really see in public, as though he's in a slightly more prim version of Neil Young and Crazy Horse.17 At another point, near the end of the afternoon, McCartney calls for "We Can Work It Out," but then, instead of starting the real song, he starts playing a weird robotic guitar riff over and over, and then singing in falsetto, to a completely different tune, first the phrase "check my machine," then the complete lyrics to "We Can Work It Out," chopping them up to fit in with this strange impromptu creation. It's not a work of grand genius, but it's captivating and deeply odd, and it exists only for these three or four minutes, never to exist again.18

In between songs, McCartney keeps up an almost constant onomatopoeic babble of yelps and whoa whoa whoa's that seem to be for no one's particular benefit, like an engine idling; during the songs, he'll do occasional leg kicks, and at one point during an instrumental break in "Coming Up," he actually starts pogoing backward. It's hardly cool, but these kinds of moments, ones that can seem a little cheesy and over-eager in front of an audience, feel very different inside this room. As part of a private language of self-expression and enthusiasm, they seem sincere and touching.

When McCartney speaks during rehearsal, it's often about minutiae of the songs, but sometimes other thoughts or memories will pop out. For instance this observation about the different terminology used by the Beatles' peers. "We called it 'rehearsing,'" he mentions to the band. "Whereas theWho called it 'practicing.' I like 'practicing.'"19 And then sometimes, as people do, he'll talk about something else entirely. "What about that guy in the newspaper, the L.A. guy?" he asks the band. "Was it cling film, wrapped up in? It was an S&M thing. He died. You're gonna fucking die if you wrap yourself in cling film. He forgot to leave a hole.…"

The most striking moment of the afternoon comes, though, when they rehearse "A Hard Day's Night." They breeze through a version of the song, and then McCartney has a question, a surprising one given that he has played this song live in public at least 205 times.20 It is about what happens at the end of the first verse. McCartney, who is playing his famous Höfner bass, wonders whether he is supposed to stay on the G or move up to the D. The band debate it back and forth without coming to a firm conclusion. When McCartney says, "What did I do?" Brian Ray, one of the band's guitarists, suggests that they listen.

And so they do. Someone quickly finds the original recording, presses play, and suddenly I am watching the surreal sight of Paul McCartney, 76, standing there in a small shed in the south of England listening to Paul McCartney, 21, performing the same song 19,816 days earlier. By the time the song reaches its middle eight—when I'm home, everything seems to be right—McCartney is mouthing along to the words, as though he's just enjoying listening to it. Interestingly, the result turns out to be slightly inconclusive—they think they can maybe hear a D in there, but it might just be a harmonic. McCartney decides he'll "just ride through on the G."

A while later, after a climactic medley of the reprise to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Helter Skelter," which he commits to with full roaring fury, McCartney says, "Okay, I reckon that'll do it, guys."

On his way out of the room, he says, as though to no one and everyone:

"We play way too loud. We don't care."

The new song McCartney and the band work on most carefully today, playing it twice, is a song that is listed on his new album under the title "Fuh You." In some ways the song, a collaboration with the über-pop producer and songwriter Ryan Tedder, is the most obviously commercial and contemporary song on the record;21 in other ways it's one of the more peculiar songs ever to be released by someone like Paul McCartney, principally because the climactic line of the chorus is built around a crude homophone. While McCartney will tell me that the official lyric sheet will read "I just want it fuh you," I think most listeners will hear what I heard long before I was told that there was an alternative: "I just want to fu[ck] you," with the consonants at the end of the penultimate word allowed to drift away, unvoiced.

I first bring up the subject by quoting to McCartney something he said in an interview about three years back: "Sex is something I prefer to do rather than sing about.… I suppose singing about sex is not really my genre."

This no longer appears to be…

"…the case? Well, if I can work it in..." He guffaws. "Said the actress to the bishop. I mean, if I can do it, great. But it's not that easy." He offers examples: "'You Can Leave Your Hat On,' 'Do Ya Think I'm Sexy.'"

Or "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?"

"'Why Don't We Do It In The Road?' Who said that was about sex?"22

Anyway, this new song is really called "Fuck You," right?

"Not at all! I mean, if you're lucky, when you're creating you can have some fun. This song was coming to a close and we were just getting a bit hysterical in the studio, as you do when you're locked away for long hours, and I said, 'Well, I'll just say, "I just wanna shag you."' And we had a laugh. And I said, 'No, I'll tell you what we can do is, I can make it questionable as to what it is I'm singing.' So the actual lyrics are You make me wanna go out and steal / I just want to fuck you or …I just want it for you." It's a schoolboy prank. Which we did a lot in the Beatles. And it brings some joy to your tawdry little life. If you listen to it, I don't actually say 'fuck,' because I don't particularly want to say 'I just want to fuck you'—I've got, like, eight grandchildren." He considers this. "Of course they'd probably like it better. But anyway.…" And continues. "So I just thought, I can fudge this easily. It was something to amuse ourselves. Hey, listen—when you make these things up, it's not like writing a Shakespeare play. I mean, it's intended as a popular song. So you don't feel like you've got to adhere to any rules. And then you do 'Why don't we do it in the road?' 'tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit,'23 'She's a prick teaser.'24 It's kind of pathetic, but actually a great thing in its pathos because it's something that makes you laugh. So what's wrong with that?"

And is doing it when you're 76 in any way different from doing it when you're 26?

"Apparently not." He laughs again. "It's the same pleasure."

Of course the very same things that bring pleasure often bring problems too. The song "Fuh You" is scheduled to be a single before the album's release. McCartney explains onstage at Abbey Road, and also to me in conversation, that he has been told there is an American radio DJ who is both deeply Christian and deeply influential; he says that his record label is worried that she won't play it and that others will follow her cue. (McCartney is relatively safe in discussing this, as both the broadcast of the Spotify concert and the publication of this interview will come after the song's fate as a single has been decided, one way or another.)

"Whatever," he says to me, for some reason whispering, as though it might somehow make a difference. "Fuck it. I'm not sure I care."

Which I'm pretty sure is best interpreted not as meaning that Paul McCartney doesn't care, but that he's been around the block too many times, and done too much already in his life, and has realized along the way that he's usually ended up happier when he's stuck to his guns and followed his instincts than when he hasn't, and that he actually cares far too much to second-guess what he should do and how he should do it every single time someone else has an opinion about how Paul McCartney should best go about being Paul McCartney.

We are talking today in the office McCartney keeps upstairs in his windmill studio. I want to take him back in time some more, but, once again, not down the paths he finds most familiar. Sometimes I fail in this, and sometimes I don't really mind failing, though it's fascinating to me not just that McCartney often gravitates to certain kinds of Beatles stories anyway, which is maybe understandable given that it is probably what is usually expected of him, but that in doing so he often offers ripostes to slurs that haven't been mentioned in the present conversation.

For instance, at one point today, even though I also never ask about this, I will suddenly find that I am listening to McCartney agitate about his angst around the circumstances of the Beatles' split—still, it seems, a tender issue: "One of the sadnesses for me when the Beatles broke up, the only way to save the business side of it was me suing the Beatles, so that was like a total heartache. And the residue was that I was to blame. I was 'the one who broke the Beatles up.' And so I spent quite a bit of time—you know, still doing it—to sort of say: 'No, I didn't. John wanted Yoko, so he said we're leaving the Beatles.…' But because of that suing incident, the word got out that I was the baddie. And the worst thing was: I kind of bought into it. My psyche sort of said, 'No, no, no, no, no, no… Yes!... No, you weren't.…You were!' I really wasn't, but if everyone thinks you were, then maybe you were."

But mostly I divert him to less discussed moments. There is all kinds of lore about the very early days of the various Beatles, pre-fame,25 and how they bonded and learned from one another, and McCartney had spoken about most of this endlessly, but there is one scenario that McCartney doesn't tend to get asked about—for reasons, I suppose, that may become obvious, though he seems pretty comfortable when I do bring it up—a scenario that seems to give a strikingly vivid, spirited, and human insight into the essence of who these boys finding their way into manhood were.

"What it was," he explains after I have prompted him, "was over at John's house, and it was just a group of us. And instead of just getting roaring drunk and partying—I don't even know if we were staying over or anything—we were all just in these chairs, and the lights were out, and somebody started masturbating, so we all did."

There would be about five of them: McCartney, Lennon, and maybe three of Lennon's friends. As they each concentrated on their mission, anyone in the group was encouraged to shout out a name that would offer relevant inspiration.

"We were just, 'Brigitte Bardot!' 'Whoo!'" McCartney says, "and then everyone would thrash a bit more."

At least until one of them—the one you would perhaps expect—opted for disruption over stimulation.

"I think it was John sort of said, 'Winston Churchill!'" McCartney remembers, and acts out the aghast, stymied reactions.

I ask whether this ritual took place often.

"There weren't really orgies, to my knowledge. There were sexual encounters of the celestial kind, and there were groupies."

"I think it was a one-off," McCartney replies. "Or maybe it was like a two-off. It wasn't a big thing. But, you know, it was just the kind of thing you didn't think much of. It was just a group. Yeah, it's quite raunchy when you think about it. There's so many things like that from when you're a kid that you look back on and you're, 'Did we do that?' But it was good harmless fun. It didn't hurt anyone. Not even Brigitte Bardot."

There is a later moment of intimate intra-Beatle bonding that is a little more famous: when, all sharing a room in their pre-fame Hamburg days, the other Beatles kept quiet, listening, while the 17-year-old George Harrison dispensed with his virginity, and then all applauded at the end.

"I think that's true," says McCartney carefully. "The thing is, these stories, particularly Beatles stories, they get to be legendary, and I do have to check: Wait a minute. I know we had one bed and two sets of bunks, and if one of the guys brought a girl back, they could just be in the bed with a blanket over them, and you wouldn't really notice much except a little bit of movement. I don't know whether that was George losing his virginity—it might have been.26 I mean, I think in the end this was one of the strengths of the Beatles, this enforced closeness which I always liken to army buddies. Because you're all in the same barracks. We were always very close and on top of each other, which meant you could totally read each other."

And that was a big advantage, going forward?

"So big, yeah. In music, it made us a very tight band, but as friends it made us able to read each other. When we were super close…examples being, like, going down the motorway and the van had no air-conditioning and it was bitter, in the middle of winter, and we lay on top of each other, literally. It was the only way we could stay warm. We suffered for a while, just shivering, and then someone said: Well, why don't we…? So we did a Beatles sandwich."