Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom”) crafted his new Amazon documentary “Man on the Run” as an intimate portrait of Paul McCartney’s turbulent decade following the Beatles’ dissolution. The film focuses exclusively on the 1970s, beginning the moment the Beatles officially break up in April 1970 and spanning through John Lennon’s death in 1980. Neville’s movie uniquely focuses on the singer-songwriter’s creative process and growth while also keeping tabs on the struggles of McCartney’s bandmates to make meaningful music in the shadow of Beatlemania.
At 27, McCartney and his wife Linda retreated to a remote farm in Scotland. Paul is battling depression, grieving the loss of his friends, and wondering if he’ll ever write another song. The film chronicles his legal war with manager Allen Klein, the public perception that he destroyed the Beatles, and the critical savaging of his early solo work. Here, albums like “McCartney” and “Ram,” dismissed as disappointments at the time, receive reassessment through new interviews with McCartney and archival audio from Linda, who died in 1998.
The documentary charts Wings’ formation with Linda on keyboards and ex-Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine, tracking the band through multiple lineup changes. Neville uses unprecedented access to previously unseen footage, Linda’s extraordinary photography, home movies, and Paul’s handwritten diaries to document the chaotic Lagos recording sessions for Band on the Run, McCartney’s 1980 marijuana arrest in Japan, and the band’s evolution from barn rehearsals to stadium tours.
McCartney’s Scottish retreat echoes the broader back-to-land movement of the era and even Bob Dylan’s withdrawal to Woodstock. McCartney’s lo-fi home recording on “McCartney” and “Ram” anticipates today’s bedroom studio culture by about 30 years. Like Dylan and the Band’s “Basement Tapes,” these artistic retreats created music ahead of its time — raw, intimate recordings that would influence generations of indie musicians decades in the future. Even the ukulele on “Ram On” sounds like it could’ve been plucked from the hipster heyday of the 2010s. Linda’s decision to join Wings despite minimal keyboard experience prefigures punk’s embrace of spirited amateurism over technical musicianship. The first Wings bus tour of random small college venues plays like a tiny version of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. In a voiceover comment, McCartney says it was like returning to the early days of The Beatles learning their chops night after night at the Cavern Club in Liverpool and in Hamburg where the band cut their teeth.
Director Morgan Neville makes a brilliant formal choice by using voiceover-only interviews with no talking heads. Contemporary conversations with McCartney, his children, and collaborators play over the captivating archival footage, keeping viewers locked in the 1970s rather than cutting to white-haired rock stars in contemporary settings. New interviews with Sean Ono Lennon, Mick Jagger, Chrissie Hynde and surviving Wings members provide perspective on McCartney’s struggle to step out from The Beatles’ shadow while building a family band. Editor Alan Lowe’s assembled archival material showcases McCartney’s transformation from wounded ex-Beatle to confident bandleader, capturing what Neville frames as a story about growing up in the public eye.
“Man on the Run”’s creative focus delivers priceless insights into McCartney’s artistic process and the meanings behind specific songs, and the artist himself talks about the therapeutic role music played during his grieving for his lost band and his struggles to stand on his own two feet. Knowing the decades of brilliant work McCartney has produced since this period makes it startling to hear him admit he had genuine doubts about ever writing another note after the Beatles broke up. These vulnerable insights and confessions give the documentary an intimacy and emotional weight not typically found in music career retrospectives.
Man on the Run is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.