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Paul McCartney made his first solo public appearance in over two years on Friday (November 5th). “Macca,” who last month was in Cleveland to induct Foo Fighters into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, was on hand in London at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall to discuss his new book, The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present.

McCartney was joined by Paul Muldoon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, poet and editor of The Lyrics, along with journalist, broadcaster and writer Samira Ahmed, who moderated the event.

The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present includes McCartney’s Beatles songs written with John Lennon, and features “a treasure trove of material from McCartney’s personal archive — drafts, letters, photographs — never seen before, which make this also a unique visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time.”

During Friday night’s discussion, McCartney touched upon the discovery of Pilchard — a long-lost pre-fame play he co-authored with Lennon. McCartney had previously described the piece as being based around “a mother and daughter discussing the mysterious lodger who shares their home. . . It’s quite a funny thing and it’s about the Messiah, actually.”

In fan-recorded audio from Friday night’s event, McCartney looked back at writing Pilchard with Lennon and rediscovering it, nearly 65-years-later: “We were just hanging out at my house and we decided we’d write a play. I’d talked about this with people for millions of years — ‘Yeah, we once tried to write a play.’ And I was going through the lyrics and stuff in my archive department. And then they said, ‘We don’t know what this is’ — I said, ‘Bloody hell! That’s the play! (Laughter) And, y’know, God, talk about coming’ through the years. It was incredible.”