Paul McCartney

When we titled our Paul McCartney biography "Man On The Run", we never imagined that, years later, one of the most in-depth and intimate documentaries about the Liverpool musician would come out under the very same title. And yet, in the end, nothing captures the post-Beatles McCartney better than that phrase, borrowed from one of the most successful albums of the Wings saga ("Band On The Run"). Because the artist and the man of the early Seventies are united precisely by a pressing urge to escape: from the greed of the music business, from the Beatles, from the controversies that followed their split, from the sense of emptiness caused by the end of a band that – as Paul himself recounts with disarming honesty – had been his entire life since childhood and adolescence. Like a faithful high-school sweetheart.

Available to stream on Amazon Prime, "Man On The Run", directed by Morgan Neville, tackles one of the least-told and most controversial chapters in Paul McCartney's career: the early Seventies, in the aftermath of the Beatles' split. It's a period often reduced to a mere epilogue to the story of the Fab Four, but the film tries to restore its complexity, following McCartney as he attempts to reinvent himself after the end of the most influential band of the 20th century.

Having retreated to his pastoral hideaway in Scotland with his wife Linda McCartney and their daughters, and given to picaresque daily adventures among sheep, goats and rams, Paul comes across as disoriented and depressed, struggling to redefine his artistic and personal identity. The film opens with a telling episode: when Life photographers arrive at the High Park farm, in Kintyre, in October 1969, they find a dishevelled, irritated McCartney, who responds by tipping a bucket of rubbish over the journalists. Shortly after, he agrees to pose with his family, uttering a line that captures the historic moment: "The Beatles thing is over. It's blown up, partly because of what we did, and partly because of other people."

The break-up of the Beatles had, in truth, already taken shape when John Lennon spoke to his bandmates about "divorce". Yet it was McCartney who ended up at the centre of the blame when, with the release of his first solo album in 1970, he made the split public. The media fallout was immediate: Lennon quickly became the spokesman for the counterculture in New York, while McCartney was seen as the one responsible for ending the band and, artistically, as the lightweight, pop-leaning ex-Beatle with his silly love songs. Critics lined up almost unanimously behind Lennon, eyeing McCartney's early solo work with suspicion, especially "Ram", which at the time was dismissed with sarcasm and only rightly reassessed many years later. An avalanche of proto-haters, ungrateful and obtuse, came down on the Liverpool lad who, at just 27, could already boast an unrivalled catalogue of memorable songs (so much for "The only thing you done was Yesterday"…).

Far from the pressures of the Beatles, McCartney longed for a simple, family-centred everyday life, yet at the same time – ever the workaholic he's always been – he simply couldn't stop writing songs. Out of that precarious balance came the idea, in 1971, of forming Wings, a new group that was at once an extended family and a musical workshop, and one that would never shake off its reputation as McCartney's backing band, because, as drummer Geoff Britton bluntly puts it: "He wanted us all to be normal and equal, but we weren't normal and equal, because he was the world superstar and we were absolute nobodies." And yet, looking closer, the band wasn't without interesting elements, starting with guitarist Denny Laine (born Brian Hines), formerly of the legendary Moody Blues. But the press naturally focused its attention on the decision to bring Linda McCartney in on keyboards, ridiculing her, often in openly sexist terms – treatment not unlike that reserved for Yoko Ono, in short. And the film makes clear just how much that hostility shaped public perception of Wings, a band already viewed with suspicion for being fronted by one of the most famous figures on the planet.

Neville structures the story almost entirely through archival material: home movies, photographs of Linda, studio recordings and concert footage. The new interviews with McCartney and daughters Mary and Stella, as well as band members, Sean Ono Lennon, Mick Jagger, Chrissie Hynde and others, are used mainly as voiceover, without appearing on screen. The result is a fast-paced, highly dynamic edit, credited to Alan Lowe, which alternates idyllic moments of family life with more tense passages.

Speaking to Forbes, Neville described "Man On The Run" as a kind of ideal sequel to "Get Back", Peter Jackson's monumental documentary about the last days the Beatles spent together recording their songs, clearly explaining the point of the project: "When people talk about the great artists of the Seventies, Paul McCartney is rarely mentioned. Not because he wasn't central, but because the weight of what he'd already done with the Beatles kept defining him. With 'Man On The Run' I wanted to look at his run out of that shadow. It was a journey made up of unlikely choices: van tours, Bruce McMouse, Nigeria, Thrillington, an anthem to Scotland. Taken together, those decisions reveal a clear logic. It was the only way to deal with such overwhelming expectations. During that decade Paul stopped running away from something and started moving towards something else: his own voice, family, life. The film is a snapshot of that journey."

A constant flight, then, perhaps even from himself, which brought out a self-destructive side of the ex-Beatle's psychology, between drug use, impulsive choices and reckless decisions, such as wandering alone through Lagos at night during the album sessions or flying to Japan with a stash of marijuana in his luggage, an episode that in 1980 cost him a week in prison. "Why do I keep creating these problems for myself?" he wonders after nearly drowning during a holiday in Hawaii. And yet it's precisely that mix of recklessness and eternal teenage enthusiasm that makes up the essence of Paul. And when the locals gather around the bonfire on the beach to sing along to the 1977 single "Mull Of Kintyre", it's hard not to think that Paul and Linda too had found their own way of giving peace a chance.

It will be "Band On The Run", the 1973 album, that will mark a decisive turning point, finally making the Wings' new direction credible and authoritative. After constant lineup changes, the band will reach global success culminating in the 1975-76 world tour, with packed stadiums and an impressive run of hits. It will be the moment when McCartney proves he can exist outside the mythology of the Beatles, while still carrying its weight on his shoulders.

The documentary doesn't shy away from the complicated relationship with John Lennon in the years following the Beatles' split. Their brotherly friendship cracks amid public jabs, spiteful songs (the cruel lines of Lennon's "How Do You Sleep?" still send chills down the spine) and intermittent attempts at reconciliation. And Lennon's shadow remains a constant presence throughout McCartney's journey, both as an artistic yardstick and as an unresolved emotional knot. The documentary also features an appearance by his son Sean Ono Lennon, who looks back on Paul McCartney's reaction to the death of John Lennon on December 8, 1980. At the time, the apparent coldness with which Paul commented on his former bandmate's murder left many puzzled. Sean Lennon, however, interprets it as the instinctive response of someone deeply shocked, unable to immediately process the loss of a brotherly friend. In doing so, he unwittingly links that moment to a remark McCartney made in 1970, when he announced to journalists that he was leaving the Beatles. Asked what he would do next, he simply replied: "I'll try to grow up." According to Sean Lennon, that growing up truly happened only many years later, at the most painful moment, as he recounts in one of the film's most touching testimonies: "When my father died, that was the moment Paul realized it was time to grow up."

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