A new documentary film about Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles years and specifically his band Wings has just been released. ‘Man On The Run’ is, for any Beatles obsessive which I do regard myself as, an essential and welcome addition to the wide array of in-depth film studies relating to the band and its members solo careers. The fact is, with John Lennon’s life being well represented on film with more than one release in the last year alone utilising hours of TV show, home movie, concert and news footage he left behind and George Harrison receiving the Martin Scorsese treatment on ‘Living In The Material World,’ Paul McCartney has been comparatively lacking in the appreciative biographical cinema experience stakes. This is no doubt partially down to the ongoing forward momentum of his career, Paul has shown no sign of slowing or retiring the creative side of his endeavors, even as the McCartney live experience has increasingly focused on Beatles material in the last three decades.

So, having given ‘Man On The Run’ an initial viewing, my takeaway reactions are that there is much to like in the production of this piece. Firstly, the on-screen images are entirely monopolized by period relevant footage and photos, you occasionally get a snippet of Paul himself during an on-camera interview but other than that, the film is devoid of the talking heads shots that are standard in these kind of pictures. Yes, there are spoken contributions from people like Mick Jagger and Chrissie Hynde, but they are never seen, and neither are members of Wings who are heard via archive interview excerpts, but it all makes for an engaging experience that feels like the main characters offering a firsthand commentary while we watch the events unfold. And lest we forget, at the core of this story is a band who were one of the biggest of the decade in the seventies and so performance clips, live shots and music videos are all in plentiful supply. The home movie finds do feature some gold dust, in particular a section where we catch Paul alone at home breaking away from the piano to take a phone call from someone hoping to speak to Linda; he has fun at the callers’ expense disguising his identity with a just about convincing enough Irish accent.

Secondly, I was appreciative of how the film avoided some obvious pitfalls. It would have been so tempting for the makers to focus purely on Wings and detach the context from Paul’s previous band. But the fact is Wings were formed in reaction to The Beatles, especially the live experiences Paul hungered for that his former fab partners definitively did not, and they existed in the mop-tops shadow. Then there were the legal disputes that led to John and Paul’s initial solo LP’s often sounding like a bitter spat played out in song for the benefit of the public. And even when those hostilities subsided as the other Beatles realized that Paul had called correctly in his suspicions about Allen Klein, the sense that the former writing team of Lennon and McCartney were keeping an ear out for each other’s new work is addressed and substantiated. Sean Ono Lennon tells at one point of the ‘McCartney’ album in his father’s record collection being very heavily played. Later still, as 1980 brings about a fatigued stepping away from the Wings project, McCartney himself recalls how John had heard ‘Coming Up’ and been inspired to get back in the studio to revive his own career, which had been put on ice since 1975.

Thirdly, this documentary is not a flowery Paul McCartney promo feature, it keeps the occasionally harsher reality of his experiences in the frame. The voice of early years Wings guitarist Henry McCullough opines that Paul’s intention for the group to be an even-handed recreation of the Beatles set up was always an idealistic ambition never likely to be realized. The often-downright nasty sniping from sections of the press and fellow musicians about Linda’s place in the band, treatment aimed at her perceived lack of musical ability that amounted to bullying, is not glossed over and neither are Paul’s brushes with the law following drug related arrests. But best of all is how the film does not indulge in an oft-repeated, self-inflicted McCartney trope of pretending that all the genius things he is credited for were the result of a happy accident. In fact, when two members of Wings quit with pointed complaints about wages before the recording of ‘Band On The Run’ we catch a glimpse of a far more ruthless Macca that he rarely allows sight of. He can be heard retaliating to the whining with the candid reasoning that if they wanted to earn more money, they should do some writing like he does, before confiding that the departures were at least partly the motivation behind the writing of what would become the bands one undisputed classic album.

So, a good weighty documentary then, very highly recommended. This month’s seventy-five track playlist opens with a small selection from the film and then takes you on a wavy 4-5 hour audio journey beginning with a Beatle and ending at Beethoven.