Paul McCartney … lost and found
A new documentary that delves into how Paul McCartney found himself post-Beatles is a moving and fascinating treat for music and film fans.
In Man on the Run, Paul McCartney does something more radical than revisiting his glory days – he relives them.
The new documentary, directed by Oscar winner Morgan Neville, drops us into the wild, uncertain decade that followed the implosion of The Beatles. What emerges is not just a portrait of an ex-Beatle trying to prove himself again. It’s the story of a man betting everything – reputation, pride, even sanity – on starting over.
Sitting onstage at a recent Q&A following a screening in London, McCartney looked both amused and wrung out by the experience of watching his past flicker across the screen.
“It’s like drowning,” he said with a laugh. “You know, it’s like your life flashing in front of you. It’s exhausting for me, you know, because it’s such a story. And I’m reminded – we tried to follow The Beatles! It’s mad.”
Mad might be an understatement. After the seismic cultural dominance of The Beatles, McCartney formed Wings and – rather than retreat into stadiums and safe legacy tours – famously climbed into a van with Linda, their kids, a couple of dogs, and a loose collective of musicians. They showed up unannounced at universities. They didn’t book hotels. They just played.
“Do you see the bravery in it now?” he was asked.
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“I actually just see the madness,” McCartney replied. “It was so impossible to do something like that. To think, yeah, we’ll just go back to square one. We’ll just show up at a university, don’t book hotels, and just take the dogs in a van. For some reason, we thought that was a great idea.”
That tension – between recklessness and reinvention – fuels Neville’s film. For the director, this was not simply a chapter in rock history. It was personal.
“I was buying Wings albums,” Neville said during the Q&A. “My dad was the Beatles fan. I was the Wings fan. And the questions Paul was asking himself – how do you deal with your own legacy? How do you balance career and family? Those are universal questions.”
If The Beatles years were mythic, Man on the Run is defiantly human. The film leans heavily on audio interviews and a treasure trove of archival footage – home movies, studio scraps, family snapshots – much of it shot by Linda. The effect is immersive and intimate. There are no stiff, present-day talking heads framed by mixing consoles.
“I hate those interviews where you cut to someone now and they look old and grisly,” McCartney joked. “And then you cut back to them then — young and beautiful. I dread those things. So, when Morgan said we’re not doing that, I thought, that’s good.”
‘Morgan said, no, let me keep them in. Because then you see all that stuff. And then the fact that you overcame it and found yourself in the end’
The archival depth is staggering. Neville described McCartney’s collection as rifling “a presidential library”. For decades, much of it was assumed lost. “In the ’60s and ’70s you’d have break-ins,” McCartney recalled. “Fans would just nick stuff. So, I thought it was all gone. But the kids at my office were fantastic. They found it all.”
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What Neville found in that mountain of material was not just triumph. It was doubt. Missteps. Awkward TV performances. The infamous Mary Had a Little Lamb. A dance routine McCartney admits he would happily erase.
“There were so many bits that are so embarrassing,” he said. “I thought maybe we could cut those bits – cool out my image. But Morgan said, no, let me keep them in. Because then you see all that stuff. And then the fact that you overcame it and found yourself in the end.”
At the heart of the film is Linda – her steadiness, her creative partnership, her belief. McCartney grew visibly emotional when talking about her.
“If there was an idea that was a little bit crazy, I’d say, ‘Should I do that?’ And she’d say, ‘It’s allowed’.” He paused. “It’s a great philosophy in life. It’s allowed.”
That sense of permission – to fail, to experiment, to grow up in public – threads through the film. When asked what he meant in a 1970 interview when he said his only plan after The Beatles was “to grow up”, McCartney reflected: “With The Beatles, we were always ‘the boys’, even in our 30s. But when I got married and there was a baby on the way, I had to grow up. We couldn’t just be ‘the boys’ anymore.”
there are about 70 McCartney songs woven through the narrative, each chosen to reflect emotional shifts as much as chart success
Growing up, in this context, meant building a family inside the chaos of rock’n’roll. It meant taking the bruises of critical disdain – early Wings were savaged – and carrying on anyway. It meant loving John Lennon as both brother and rival.
“He was always just that guy to me,” McCartney said. “Even when he was being really mean. I loved him. We were like a little magical force.”
Musically, the film is exhaustive. Neville estimates there are about 70 McCartney songs woven through the narrative, each chosen to reflect emotional shifts as much as chart success. Some surprised even their creator.
“Arrow Through Me,” I hadn’t heard that in a while,” McCartney admitted. “And there’s one at the piano, All of You. I hadn’t heard that for a long time. It’s good because they do sound good. It’s the young, beautiful me singing it.”
“I said to someone when it was finished, it’s a heck of a story,” McCartney reflected. “In my craziness and enthusiasm, we did this crazy thing. We stuck with it and made it work. There is something brave about that. It didn’t have to work out. But it did.”
Man on the Run is now on Prime.
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