Paul McCartney and Wings performs at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y. on May 21, 1976.Richard Drew/The Associated Press
“If I ever get out of here,” Paul McCartney sang on 1973’s Band on the Run. The song about imprisonment – “stuck inside these four walls” – could be seen as metaphor for his situation after the Beatles breakup. Most of his energy in the 1970s was dedicated to escaping his Fab Four past.
Morgan Neville’s likeable new documentary Man on the Run, which debuts on Prime Video on Friday, candidly covers McCartney’s life and the formation of his band Wings in the years after the Beatles. Neville, whose previous films include the Academy Award-winning 20 Feet from Stardom and the acclaimed Fred Rogers biographical doc Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, spoke to The Globe and Mail from New York.
Paul McCartney is the film’s executive producer. What was your assignment as the director, as you saw it?
Paul was interested in revisiting the Wings era. He asked me if I thought there was a good film there. I told him the film should begin when the Beatles broke up in 1969 and that it should end when Wings ended, which was also when John Lennon died.
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So, it ends in 1980. Beyond the obvious, what changed with McCartney at that point?
It was when Paul McCartney stopped pretending he wasn’t Paul McCartney. I didn’t say that to him in our first meeting, but I think the Paul McCartney of today begins at the end of this film. For his 1982 solo album Tug of War, he goes back to work with George Martin. He’s only recorded as Paul, not Wings, ever since.
Did he agree with your ideas for the documentary?
He said, ‘It sounds good.’ He didn’t have another bit of input. He saw the film for the first time when it was just about done. He had a pad of paper with him as he watched it. At the end, he said, ‘Here are my notes.’ The pad of paper was blank.
Did he not give any feedback at all?
He said it was very emotional to watch. It strikes a chord with him. He did say there was a lot of embarrassing stuff in the film.
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Like the bad album reviews and former band members groaning about McCartney’s version of Mary Had a Little Lamb?
I definitely didn’t pull any punches. I told Paul we need to understand the failure to understand the success. People see Paul McCartney as someone who is always winning. It’s important to understand and zero in on the time when he was probably at his lowest, career-wise. It’s difficult, but honest.
The film covers past criticisms directed at McCartney and addresses what may be misconceptions: that he was bossy, that he broke up the Beatles, that he reacted casually and coldly to the news of Lennon’s murder.
Whether it’s John admitting Paul was right about Beatles manager Allen Klein or Sean Lennon talking about Paul’s ‘it’s a drag’ comment after John was killed, these are things that got flattened by time. The newspaper headline was that Paul was insensitive when asked about John’s death. But his daughter Stella tells the story of Paul getting the phone call early that morning and that he was devastated. I hadn’t heard that story before. Part of me was trying to add nuance to the tropes of Paul and Wings.
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I came away from the film thinking McCartney wasn’t being cold when the media stuck cameras and microphones in his face right after Lennon’s death. It occurred to me that the media wanted a grand statement or a public display of grief, and that McCartney made a conscious decision not to give them what they wanted.
I think you’re right. He was confronted. It wasn’t the right time. And of course, there’s the shock that one goes through. You are unable to process your emotions right away. I think it took Paul a decade to process what happened with John and his grief.
Both McCartney and Sean talk about Paul and John in the 1970s. Was there an attempt with this film to recast their post-Beatles relationship as loving rather than adversarial?
Yeah. Even in the clips where we see John referring to Paul as his best friend or his brother, you understand they are connected forever in time. And that maybe you can be meaner to somebody if they are your brother, because they understand you on a more fundamental level.
Do you think they would have got back together if Lennon hadn’t died?
John almost went down to New Orleans when Wings was recording Venus and Mars there in 1975. Paul and Linda were preparing for John to visit, but it was right about the time he got back with Yoko. I think if John had lived, they would have played together again. I think it would have been inevitable.
This interview has been edited and condensed.