Live and let live

That’s a comfortable, upholstered chair on the cover of Paul McCartney’s “Memory Almost Full” album, but it’s not a rocker.

On the cusp of turning 65, the ex-Beatle couldn’t be less inclined to cool his jets.

After wrapping up the new disc (released Tuesday) and a frolicsome video for “Dance Tonight”, McCartney is already resuming work on a classical guitar concerto and throwing himself into a photography project, inspired by late wife Linda.

“I’m lucky to have a life that contains all these things,” he says in a phone interview from a studio in Sussex, England. “I do have a lot of interests, and retiring isn’t one of them.”

Nor is that other twilight tradition: the memoir. McCartney won’t consider putting his memories to paper, even if only to correct a record that’s been bent and stretched in countless accounts of his life story.

“I’d probably get it wrong, too,” he says, adding: “I’m too busy doing it to write about it.”

In a five-song closing suite on “Memory,” McCartney revisits the signposts of his past. Elsewhere, he touches on issues of mortality and a shrinking future, but never without his signature optimism.

“It’s a mixed message,” he says. “Look back at the past, but don’t live in it and don’t expect it to happen again. It’s very much a changing world, and you have to leave room for new stuff.”

That’s in keeping with the album’s title, taken from a message that popped up when the memory bank in McCartney’s cell phone was nearing capacity.

“It struck me as quite poetic,” he says. “In modern life, there is so much sensory overload. There’s so much coming at you these days that you have to delete something to make room for something else. And it applies equally to a 20-year-old as it does to me.”

McCartney hopes to reach 20-year-olds through the lighthearted video for mandolin-sweetened “Dance Tonight,” posted on YouTube.

Directed by Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”), the clip finds McCartney performing amid a swarm of high-stepping ghosts. One of them, actress Natalie Portman, was lured to the project by McCartney’s designer daughter, Stella.

“Natalie is vegetarian, and Stella does the world’s most stylish non-leather shoes,” he says. “That was the connection.

“I rang her up. I think the combination of Michel Gondry and myself interested her.”

Another way he hopes to expand his audience is through a partnership with coffee giant Starbucks.

After completing “Memory,” McCartney shocked many by leaving Capitol/EMI, his home since 1962, to sign as the inaugural artist on Hear Music, the label formed by Starbucks and Concord Music Group.

“It was a carefully considered decision,” he says. “Before I left, I said, ‘Look, guys, you’re not going to be able to do a good job on this. There’s a new world out there, and I want to reach people, and I want to have an exciting time doing it.’ “

He’s thrilled to have the album in 10,000 Starbucks locations, including 400 in China.

“It’s like being a kid again,” he says, “which is exactly what I wanted, because the danger is now boredom.”

Rave reviews are comparing “Memory” to the best efforts by McCartney’s former band, Wings, and he’s eager to bring such tunes as “Only Mama Knows” and “House of Wax” to the stage. Between promotional duties, he and his band are rehearsing for a few surprise shows in the U.K., Los Angeles and New York.

“I won’t get seriously out on the road, I would imagine, until next year,” he says, attributing the delay to his divorce from Heather Mills. “I’ve obviously got my personal circumstances, and there’s a lot of sorting out to be done there.”

The topic of his broken four-year marriage is off limits. He is, however, voluble on a subject that he spent years dodging.

“For a while there, I just had to say, ‘Look, I don’t want to talk about The Beatles,’ ” McCartney explains. “I was trying to set up Wings and we knew we had a mountain to climb, and The Beatles were a bigger mountain. I didn’t do Beatles songs.

“All of that’s gone away. I look at it now with great fondness and as something to be proud of. I love singing Beatles songs.”

The Beatles catalog may expand with “Now and Then”, a late-‘70s John Lennon demo that was considered for the mid-‘90s “Anthology” series, which yielded the refurbished “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”.

He added parts to “Now and Then” along with George Harrison and Ringo Starr, McCartney says, “but we gave up.

“John’s vocal on the tape, it’s pretty bad quality, but emotional,” he says. “With technology these days, you never know. I’d be interested to see if anything could be done. There is something there in the bushes.”

It’s just another item on a growing to-do list that he has promised his family will be set aside on June 18 for his 65th birthday celebration.

“My kids are throwing a little party for me, I hear,” he says.

What’s a suitable gift for the globe’s richest pop star?

“I never know how to answer that,” he confesses. “I always say, ‘A pair of black socks.’ “