'Forthlin Road' by Shaun McCrindle

I wrote this song in 2022 to celebrate Paul McCartney's 80th birthday. 2022 was a big year for 'Macca'. 'The Lyrics' had been published in late 2021 and he would headline Glastonbury that summer. I loved the wonderfully candid memoir format of 'The Lyrics' and, in 2022, I also read the Sounes' biography of McCartney and acquired the Bullfinch book of McCartney's artwork, 'Paintings'. So I was very much in 'McCartney land' when The National Trust announced it was inviting songwriters to compose and perform an original song at Forthlin Road, Liverpool, where Paul lived with his famly when he was a teenager, writing future Beatles classics with John Lennon. Unfortunately, I was not eligiible to enter the NT competition as I am a member of PRS (the Performing Rights Society). I am not sure why this fact prohibited entry but there you go.

What you see and hear here is a demo recording of the song I made at home paired with a simple lyric video. The lyric video features images I do not own the copyright for, among them a couple of Mike McCartney's famous photos of the proto-Beatles composing together at Forthlin Road, one of Paul's humorous self-portrait paintings (from the Bullfinch catalogue), video footage of George Harrison playing slide guitar (for me, the slide guitar in the song represents the spirit of George Harrison), Beatles singles artwork, and the photo of 'Beatlemania' by PA News. That's quite a lot of 'image theft'! However, the video was put together in the spirit of homage to the legacy of the Beatles and I hope no-one is offended by my not-for-profit appropriation of this visual material which was selected to complement the lyric (and to save you looking at a brick wall for 3 minutes)!

As for the song itself, in it I imagined myself as Paul, writing to John, about their unique songwriting partnership, an athletic process of knocking ideas back-and-forth which made me think of "musical tennis", allied to the craft skills of the "forge".
After the first chorus, we get some of the titles of classic Beatles hits that were composed at Forthlin Road: 'She Loves You', 'Love Me Do', 'I Saw Her Standing There', and the beginnings of 'When I'm 64'. It's amazing to think these songs were composed when the boys were still partly living at home. (I think the detail about "old Jim's piano" came from Paul, in 'The Lyrics'.)
The middle section goes on to explore the idea of Paul and John as Quarry Men, "digging deep" to "mine the heart seam". Of course, this also alludes to the origin of The Beatles in The Quarry Men. I've taken the liberty of imagining a church steeple at Woolton fete; in fact, I believe there was only a church tower and no steeple at St Peter's parish church (so, a bit of poetic license was used here!).
The final verse of the song ("Motherless..") acknowledges the fact that both Paul and John lost their mothers during their teens, suggesting that perhaps this shared experience helped them forge their intense songwriting partnership at Forthlin Road.
The song concludes by asserting the boys' Liverpudlian roots, "coming home" to Forthlin Road after "flying here, and landing there", as globe-trotting recording artists.

I hope you enjoy it.

Forthlin Road

You and me, at Forthlin Road
It's musical tennis in the motherlode
You serve me, and I return
And between us we manage in this match of words

To forge a song, yeah we forge a song,
We make it up as we go along,
We forge a song, yeah we forge a song,
Like nobody else can do-oo-oo

She Loves You (yeah! yeah! yeah!)
And you say I Saw Her Standing There,
Love Me Do, and many more
And old Jim's piano, When I'm 64

We are Quarry Men
And we're digging deep
We mine the heart seam
Eight days a week
We are drilling down
To the core
Finish one song and we
Start some more,
We were drawn together
At the village fete
Where the steeple rise
Where the steeple rise
Now the songs keep coming
And they just won't wait
There is Beatle-mania!
Beatle-mania!!!

Motherless, you and I,
Like birds of a feather in the empty sku,
Flying here and landing there,
But still Liverpudlian everywhere,

We forge our songs, yeah we forge our songs,
We make 'em up as we go along,
We forge our songs, yeah we forge our songs,
Like nobody else can do-oo-oo....

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Видео 'Forthlin Road' by Shaun McCrindle канала Shaun McCrindle