Paul McCartney gave thousands of concerts throughout his career. Since he’s still human, he’s bound to make a few mistakes during these performances. With so many iconic songs from The Beatles, The Wings and his solo career, he was bound to mix up some lyrics or forget about them altogether. McCartney admitted to making a mistake performing “Penny Lane” and restarted the song.
Paul McCartney mixed up the order of the verses of “Penny Lane”
Paul McCartney constantly changes his setlist during his tour. He only regularly plays a few songs, such as “Hey Jude” and “Live and Let Die”. When he decides to bring back a song, he has to perfect it once again, even after years of not playing it. “Penny Lane” is a Beatles classic, but not a claimed audience.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, McCartney said he was performing “Penny Lane” in Paris when he accidentally reversed the second and first verses.
“It should have been ‘a barber showing photographs.’ band correctly thought, ‘He skipped verse one – we’ll go in the middle.'”
Rather than continuing with this incorrect version, the British singer-songwriter stopped the show and restarted the track. A friend of his thought that was a bit too much and asked him if he did that at every gig.
“It was a car accident at Penny Lane,” he added. “I had to say ‘Stop, stop. We totally screwed up. We’re going to do it again. The audience went wild. A friend, Cilla Black, who just passed away, came to see me after the show: ‘I loved this part. Do you do it every night?”
‘Penny Lane’ is based on an actual location in Liverpool
The lyrics of “Penny Lane” come from the personal experience of Paul McCartney. It is a street in Liverpool with many businesses, shops and independent restaurants. There’s even a now-famous hair salon, as mentioned in the song. In an interview with Clash, McCartney said it was an area he and John Lennon were familiar with as they hung around the bus terminal.
“‘Penny Lane’ was a little nostalgic, but it was definitely a place John and I knew,” McCartney explained. “It was actually a bus terminal. I would take a bus to go to his place, and I had to change at Penny Lane or the same with him for me, so we often hung out at this terminus, like a roundabout. It was a place we both knew so we both knew what was going on in the story.
How did ‘Penny Lane’ do on the charts?
“Penny Lane” debuted in 1967 as a double A-side single with “Strawberry Fields Forever”. “Strawberry Fields Forever” is another song about an actual location. Lennon wrote it about the Strawberry Field house in Liverpool, where he played in the garden as a child. Lennon and McCartney had a competitive spirit, but McCartney won this round as “Penny Lane” outplayed “Strawberry Fields Forever”.
The track reached No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart. It reached No. 1 in other countries including Sweden, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Australia and Canada. Meanwhile, “Strawberry Fields Forever” reached No. 8 in the US and No. 2 in the UK.