A quirk of the release schedule means the new doc Man on the Run begs reading as Paul McCartney's The Moment. Scholar of pop Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom) here revisits one of the most compelling stories in the Macca biography: what Paul did once the Beatles, surely the toughest ever act to follow, cracked and fractured at the turn of the 1970s. If you know your music history, you'll already know the answer (Wings, ultimately, hence the title), yet Neville recounts how it all played out month by month and year by year; by way of a guide, he has his subject's own words, McCartney having sagely devoted his golden years to setting the record straight once and for all. As the latter has it, this was both retreat and restart, the 27-year-old McCartney hunkering down on a farm in the Scottish Highlands with a young family and several fields' worth of sheep and chickens. Stepping away from the eyes of the world, the jostling entourage and the predatory hangers-on (notably the lawyer Allen Klein, busy sinking his teeth into the ex-Beatles), the singer could here turn his back on the pandemonium and restless experimentation of his former life, instead pledging to get back (as it were) to basics: writing songs - silly love songs, in some cases; songs for mums and dads like him and Linda, rather than for the kids or the heads - while starting a band to carry these songs out on tour, and hopefully coming to enjoy it once more. This McCartney is a man determined to put down roots and potter round inside his own wheelyard for a bit: the first track recorded in this new solo guise started with the sound of his kitchen door opening (not "Let 'Em In", but the same principle applies), his first hit was the Beatley "Another Day", and a press release for his first album, 1970's McCartney, asserted its maker's only ambition was "to grow up".
The key themes here, then, are maturation and settling down, which are arguably less grabby and sexy than breaking through and making it big; the film's soundtrack, certainly, is far more Radio 2 than Radio 1. (My theory remains that Wings couldn't have survived into the MTV era, with its heightened visual scrutiny: the haircuts alone are those of musos who've found their other half and no longer give a shit, a response - whether conscious or unconscious - to the rigorous image maintenance of the Brian Epstein years.) If this project isn't quite in the first rank of recent Beatles memorabilia, it's at least more dramatic than I was expecting. Before finding his sought-after peace, this Paul has to dodge critical brickbats and - perhaps more woundingly - the acid-tipped bullets being fired in his direction by his erstwhile writing partner. As the doc goes on to show, Lennon and McCartney would make up by the time of the former's murder in 1980, but an at least friendly rivalry persists even today: Man on the Run is surely McCartney's response to 2024's acclaimed One to One: John & Yoko, which retold the story of Lennon's Seventies. More arresting yet: the film's opening movement, a potted recap of everything you'll have seen when the Beatles Anthology appeared on streaming just before Christmas, leans heavily into those rumours that McCartney had died circa Sgt. Pepper in order to underline its subject's sudden absence from the limelight. While those rumours obviously proved unfounded, Neville floats the thesis that Paul had at least to die creatively - to embrace irrelevance, become someone other than Paul McCartney, Superstar Musician, see his singles chart for one week at #39 - so as to relieve the pressure and permit himself the time and space for a full creative rethink. For a brief while back there - thanks to the efforts of Messrs. Simon and Anka - he was no longer the most famous Paul in the universe.
Wings, for their part, would be conceived as a very Seventies travelling (sometimes flying) circus; an embrace of the hippy ethos, notionally communal and beardily self-sufficient, going from town to town for big bags of fifty pence pieces. (Cash in hand, while the Beatles were bogged down in Klein's contract snarl-ups.) Yet even here Neville reveals backstage interpersonal drama. Linda and Paul were all right, but the latter - still a megastar, even as he donned a farmer's dungarees - proved ever so slightly dismissive of those session musicians who helped to get this show on the road. One unexpected development the film catches: the emergence of Nasty Paul, or at least Steely Paul, the musician burnt by experience into looking out for his own interests. (If he emerges somewhat sheepishly from this portrait, it's because even as he freed himself from one set of contractual shackles, he surely realised he was in danger of turning into another Brian Epstein.) The more personally settled and financially secure Paul became, the freer he felt to pursue creative independence; you can feel him easing himself into going fully solo again as the Eighties come around. (Neville cues up the glorious promo for "Coming Up": very funny, yes, but also a virtuoso's fantasy of playing all the parts simultaneously.) "Mull of Kintyre" now looks like a wildly successful warm-up for "Pipes of Peace"; the animated talking mouse in the Wings Christmas special of 1973 is the creation of a young father heading to Rupert and the Frog Song. By staying close to home and playing relatively safe, McCartney gave himself a future that Lennon never got. Neville tells the story in established pop-doc style (lots of photomontaging, some of which has the unfortunate air of Saturday morning kids' TV), omitting "Give Ireland Back to the Irish", which might have contradicted any idea Paul was seeking the quiet life; any British or Irish filmmaker would have addressed that as well as Wings' wonky-naff pop-cultural legacy (Alan Partridge bellowing "Jet", say, or the Trigger Happy TV sketches). In his narration, however, McCartney continues his project of late-life generosity: having gifted us these songs (and the memories attached to them), now he gives us his memories of how they came to be. Sam Mendes' upcoming Beatles films are going to have their work cut out turning up anything new or revealing - although it strikes me there is an obvious gap in the market for a Ringo movie. Have the requests for a career-spanning interview been tossed out with all the fan mail? Peace and love, man; peace and love.
Man on the Run is now showing at the Picturehouse at FACT, Manchester and streaming via Prime Video.
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