Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles life in the ’70s, including the formation of his band Wings, is the focus of the new documentary Paul McCartney: Man on the Run. Director Morgan Neville tells ABC Audio he was interested in the story because it’s “one of the most misunderstood chapters” of any of the Beatles’ members lives.
“You think of McCartney as always winning, beloved and going from success to success. And this is like his dark night of the soul,” he says, adding it’s when McCartney had to “answer all these profound questions where he’s doubting even making music.”
Neville says McCartney was initially interested in just making a film about Wings, but the director had different ideas.
“When I sat down with him, I said, ‘Look, the story has to begin the moment The Beatles break up and to me, the story ends when John (Lennon) dies,'” he explains, noting it’s because it shows the arc of McCartney “trying to escape the shadow of The Beatles.”
The film is told through archival photos and video, as well as audio interviews with McCartney, members of Wings and others. Neville says he chose that format because it brings the film more into the present.
“If you constantly cut to people in their 80s talking about how great it was 50 years ago or whatever, it’s very retrospective,” he says.
And while Neville interviewed McCartney several times for the film, he says the rocker otherwise kept his hands off the project.
“He did not have a single comment about the film till he watched it when it was done,” Neville says, noting that after, “He actually had a pad of paper with him and he said, ‘Here are my notes,’ and he held up the page and [it] was blank.”
Paul McCartney: Man on the Run is streaming on Prime Video.
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