Episode Details

Paul McCartney heard skiffle on the radio as a Liverpool teenager and it changed his life. Seven decades later he used artificial intelligence to extract John Lennon's voice from a degraded cassette tape and finish a Beatles song. No other career in popular music spans as much ground or adapts as relentlessly.

This episode follows McCartney from his mother's death and his partnership with Lennon through Wings, his solo decades, and his late-career willingness to embrace technology that would have been unimaginable when he first picked up a guitar.

• Yesterday is the most covered song in recorded music history with over 2,200 versions
• He used AI to isolate John Lennon's vocals for the 2023 Beatles release Now and Then
• He was arrested in Japan in 1980 for marijuana possession and spent nine days in jail
• He has toured continuously into his eighties, playing three-hour concerts without an intermission