Paul McCartney narrates his post-Beatles life, and he is waspishly funny, unapologetic, forgiving, and occasionally mighty p***ed off
Are we Beatled out yet? In the past few years alone, we have had a "new" Beatles single alchemised from a dusty old demo, an IMAX Let it Be documentary, a remastering of the Anthology TV series, and the announcement of four standalone biopics of John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
It doesn't stop there - later this year, a new coffee table book of George Harrison’s photographs will be published - and we should all shudder at what AI will do to The Beatles next.
There is a seemingly bottomless vault of Beatles goodies that can be given a quick rinse and presented all over again. And again, maybe with a hidden gem somewhere in the overload.
Personally, I am here for all of it.
Which brings us to Morgan Neville’s new documentary about Paul McCartney just after The Beatles broke up in 1969. It could be the definitive account, and while it offers little new, the subject is so fascinating, so seductive, and so magical, you just cannot look away.
It’s a brisk and very entertaining rattle through Macca’s wilderness years, the formation of Wings, his indelibly naff light entertainment period, and his eventual reclamation of megastar status.
Paul himself is the off-camera narrator, and he is waspishly funny, unapologetic, forgiving, and occasionally mighty p***ed off. There are also new interviews with his children and great archive input from pretty much everyone who came into the great man’s orbit.
We first find him in late 1969, wounded, vulnerable, and angry as he retreats to High Park Farm on the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland with his new wife, Linda, their young family, and his famous Old English Sheepdog Martha to plot his next move.
Heavily bearded and wild-eyed, Macca looks like a jaded highland crofter and as he recalls, he was given to nursing a whisky bottle and clobbering interloping reporters with a bucket as he diced with the very nasty corporate fallout of the Beatles' split, tried to raise a family, and decide what the hell to do next. He was only 27.
"When I hear someone damning Paul McCartney, I tend to agree with them. I bought into that," he says. After all, he was the man who broke up The Beatles. The truth is, of course, a lot more complicated than that and may forever be lost in the maze of business and personal animosities.
Meanwhile, as the hippy dream vanishes in a haze of Agent Orange and social and industrial unrest, John and Yoko are becoming counterculture icons, George is disappearing deeper into the mystic, and the saintly Ringo, well, the saintly Ringo just went on being the saintly Ringo. As the story goes, McCartney got busy dashing off silly love songs and bloody-mindedly writing music for grannies and housewives.
However, as Neville’s film reveals, McCartney seemed to be motivated by anger and resentment at how he was pilloried in the post-Beatles years. There is also a good deal of naivety and bravado, and so it only seemed natural that he would form a new band if only to lay the ghost of his old band to rest. As if...
Of course, the Wings era is very well documented and it is great to see so much time given to Linda, who passed away in 1998. And like Lennon, Paul’s choice of wife was the target of some pretty extraordinary chauvinism and sexism. As she succinctly remarks in an archive interview, "I’m not there because I’m the greatest keyboard player. I’m there because we love each other." Good for her.
McCartney also hired musicians of the calibre of Denny Laine of The Moody Blues and Northern Irish guitar ace Henry McCullough. They toured Europe in a multi-coloured double-decker bus and nothing screams the 1970s like touring around Europe in a multi-coloured double-decker bus.
However, the first incarnation of Wings, "the band The Beatles could have been", according to Alan Partridge, was never going to last and it is to Macca’s credit that this new film airs the band’s discontent about wages and their side men status. As McCullough remarks. "It wasn’t real. It was a dream."
The post-Beatles Lennon-McCartney axis is also well covered and we can delight in those diss tracks all over again and hear Macca’s withering contempt for Allen Klein (or "pig" as he called him), the brash New Jersey money man the rest of the Beatles hired to look after their business affairs.
And then there is the actual music, from the early wonder of Maybe I’m Amazed, to oddities like Long Haired Lady, to juggernauts like Live and Let Die and Mull of Kintyre - nine weeks at No 1 in the UK and the 1977 Christmas number one in Ireland - and glittering pop moments like Coming Up and wonky curios such as Temporary Secretary.
This is a very enjoyable and occasionally surprising journey into the hazy past and it may be the final word in the ongoing campaign of artistic rehabilitation. But, sure, haven’t we all known all along that Paul was always the best Beatle.
Paul McCartney: Man on the Run is available to watch on Prime Video
