Paul McCartney Talks ‘Man on the Run’ Documentary: ‘What Do You Do After the Beatles?’
Categoria: Musica
After a screening at the Academy Museum, McCartney and director Morgan Neville spoke about the project, which chronicles McCartney's decade after the Beatles.
Por Billboard | 29/09/2026
What can a musician do next after being in, arguably, the greatest band of all time? Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville’s 2026 documentary, Man on the Run , seeks to answer just that. With never-before-seen footage of Paul McCartney , his family, and his second band, Wings, Neville shares McCartney’s challenging journey from Beatles frontman to soloist to leader of a new group. Set between about 1968 and 1980, McCartney starts on his isolated Scottish farm with his wife, Linda, and growing family, wrestling with what to do with his newfound freedom. The Beatles had called it quits — it was John Lennon’s idea, says McCartney — but the world didn’t know it yet. Over the course of its runtime, Man On The Run shows McCartney as he makes his way back to headlining arenas across America and all the bumps along the way to get there. Unflinching, the documentary does not shy away from addressing the critics’ panning of much of McCartney’s solo work, the murder of John Lennon , his brief stint in a Japanese prison and his bold choice to sue the Beatles. Key figures like Stella and Mary McCartney, Mick Jagger, Denny Laine, Laurence Juber, Chrissie Hynde, Joe English, as well as Paul himself shared stories for the documentary. Linda, who passed away in 1998, also shared several stories via archival footage, voice-over, and photos. The documentary, which is available now on Amazon Prime, was screened at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles on Monday (September 28), and the presentation was followed by a Q+A with McCartney and Neville, hosted by filmmaker Judd Apatow. A condensed and edited version of that conversation can be found below. Apatow: So, Paul, when someone says, “Let’s do a Wings [documentary],” do you think, “Great, I really want to dig into that period of my life,” or, “Oh, God”? McCartney: No, I like that period. Well, you know, now it’s a fond memory. What do you do after the Beatles? The Beatles break up. That’s been your only job you’ve ever had, and then you don’t have it anymore. It’s like you got sacked. And so that was Wings, you know—trying to figure it out. And as you can see in the film, we did well. It was kind of madcap, you know. But, yeah, no, I like that period. Oh, and then on top of [leaving the Beatles], there was this business guy, Allen Klein, who was basically stealing from the Beatles, and I was the only one who thought that. The other guys thought, “We love him.” Apatow: Why were they so dumb? Honestly, because I think the business people knew he was a kind of shady character. McCartney: I’ll tell you why. Because you’d be at a meeting with him, and you’d go, “What do you want? The New York guy, what do you want? What do you want? A million dollars?” “Yeah.” “Okay, you got it.” He just promised the earth and didn’t deliver it. But meanwhile, I could see that this was a crook. It was me against the other guys, and that