McCartney missive explains new CD

It may be coincidental, but now that Heather Mills has undergone a public-image makeover with her appearances on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” following all the negative press generated in England over her divorce from Paul McCartney, her soon-to-be-ex is making an unusual step into the public arena with the release of his new studio album, “Memory Almost Full,” due June 5.

It’s his first since leaving his longtime home at EMI/Capitol Records and signing with Hear Music, the new Starbucks-Concord Music Group joint venture, which is giving the project flagship status as its inaugural release.

Instead of the usual press release summarizing the artist’s career with a quick quote or two about the new music, McCartney today is scheduled to issue a detailed two-page letter describing for fans the process he went through working on the album.

It begins with an explanation that he had started work on this album in 2003, before he finished his Grammy-nominated 2005 CD “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard,” a subtle way of communicating the fact that songs on this new collection shouldn’t be interpreted as reflective of the bitter divorce proceedings.

“I know people are going to look at some of the songs and interpret them in different ways,” he writes, “but this has always been the case. The thing is that I love writing songs, so I just write and write. I never really get to a point where I start thinking I’m going to write about specific subjects. Inevitably, though, what I am thinking is going to find its way into what I’m doing.”

He also casually invokes the B word, referencing his tenure four decades ago with the Beatles.

“There is a medley of five songs towards the end and that was purposefully retrospective. I thought this might be because I’m at this point in my life, but then I think about the times I was writing with John [Lennon] and a lot of that was also looking back.”

As for the title, McCartney says, “I was thinking about what would sum the whole thing up and ‘Memory Almost Full’ sprung to mind. It’s a phrase that seemed to embrace modern life; in modern life, our brains can get a bit overloaded. I realised I had also seen it come up on my phone a few times. When I started bouncing the idea round with some friends, they nearly all got different meanings out of it, but they all said they loved it.”

The letter, the full text of which may be found at latimes.com/entertainment, is signed “All the best, Paul McCartney, April 2007.”

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-- Randy Lewis