First public airing of “Young Boy”

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Paul McCartney was on the Pepsi Chart show. He co-hosted the presentation of the Top 10, was interviewed and presented his upcoming new single “Young Boy“. This was the first time the new song was played anywhere in the world.

Young Boy was written like one of the early Beatles tunes – quite quickly, quite easily and off the cuff. Young Boy is just about a young guy looking for a way to find love and basically I suppose I was thinking of my own son, who’s 19 – though he’ll kill me for saying that. It’s for anyone around that age, looking for love. I remember the feeling well. I remember thinking ‘There’s 300 million people out there and one of them is the right one for me’ – but you don’t know if you’ll ever meet them or how you’ll do it. It’s a pretty scary feeling. So this song is for all those people.

Paul McCartney, interview for the Pepsi Chart Show

I’d driven Linda to one of her cookery assignments and, as I knew she’s be busy for about two hours doing that, I set myself a deadline to write a song in that time. It’s just a little game that I sometimes play with myself – for that moment when people say `What did you do? Did you get bored?’ and I can say `Oh, I wrote a song, wanna hear it?`

Paul McCartney, interview for the Pepsi Chart Show

“Young Boy” was released as a single in the UK, on April 28, 1997, three weeks after this premiere.

From Wikipedia:

The Pepsi Chart (previously known as “The Pepsi Network Chart Show”) was a networked Sunday afternoon Top 40 countdown on UK radio that started life on 1 August 1993 with Neil ‘Doctor’ Fox hosting the show live from the Capital Radio studios in London. The Pepsi Chart show carried an emphasis in fun and was the UK’s first personality-led chart show: the presenter was live and exciting, big-prize competitions were held, and the Top 10 was official – i.e. it was entirely sales-based resulting in a shared song order with the BBC’s Radio 1 Official Chart Show and also theoretically played out at the same time.

The Pepsi Chart was produced for CRCA by Unique Productions who along with the (then) programme director of Capital Radio Richard Park, and Fox, came up with the new show concept. The show was broadcast on between 80 and 110 local commercial radio stations across the UK via SMS satellite. Locums for the ‘Doctor’ included Capital’s own Steve Penk and Key 103 Manchester’s Darren Proctor. Occasional guest presenters filled in, such as Richard Blackwood of MTV UK & Ireland fame.

Last updated on September 29, 2020