“Whenever I hear someone damning Paul McCartney,” a voice says early in Man on the Run, “I tend to agree with them.” The person saying this? Paul McCartney. It’s a perfect way to dive into the story of Wings. Man on the Run is director Morgan Neville’s delightful new documentary on one of the strangest chapters in the Macca story: Wings, the weird 1970s band he started after the Beatles fell apart. For years, this was a taboo subject he basically tried to write out of his narrative — the most-mocked, least-respected corner of his career, the case of the Beatle who broke bad.
But now McCartney’s finally ready to reclaim the Wings legacy. Man on the Run, out Friday along with an accompanying soundtrack, is an intimate portrait of a rock superstar who knew what the world wanted from him — but decided to rip it up and start over from scratch, just for kicks. “We don’t ‘work’ music,” he explains in the doc. “We play it. I’m a playaholic!”
All through Man on the Run, the question keeps coming up (like a flower, on the hour): Why exactly is Paul doing this the hard way? Why is he bothering to start a new band, with a bunch of hippie malcontents who keep complaining at his control-freak ways? (Didn’t they, like, ask around?) Why isn’t he just playing the Beatles hits? There’s a great anecdote when Paul visits Nashville in the summer of 1974 and tells guitarist Jerry Reed that Wings are going back out on the road. Reed says, “If I was Paul McCartney, I’d buy the road.”
When the Fabs broke up, the whole world wanted Paul to carry on being a Beatle. He was the only one who wanted something different. But he needed to find his voice, on his own. So he retreated to his Scottish farm with his new wife, Linda Eastman. He formed Wings with her and a few unknowns, playing low-stakes amateur gigs. He’d load the band into the van, show up at some random university, then ask the startled students if he could play tonight. For years, he refused to sing any of his Beatles classics. None of it seemed to make any sense.
But he took some wise advice from Linda, who told him, “Let’s just go get lost.” So that’s exactly what they did. Two of them. Plus the backup guys, who were as confused as anyone about why the hell they were here. He kept making moves guaranteed to piss people off — like his 1972 single, crooning the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” This didn’t go over well with anyone, least of all the rest of Wings. “Mary had a little fucking lamb?” one of the band splutters in the doc. “Are you nuts?”
The biggest Wings controversy at the time: the fact that Paul brought his wife into the band. “I’m not here because I’m the greatest keyboard player,” Linda says in one scene. “I’m here because we love each other.” For John and Paul to break up the Beatles and form new bands with their wives, whose musical expertise ranged from “acquired taste” to “you gotta be kidding,” that was one of their revolutionary innovations — yet one that nobody respected at the time. Fans derided Linda and Yoko all through the 1970s, in ugly ways that bordered on misogyny and often crossed right over. Both women were years ahead of their time — Mother Superiors who jumped the gun.
John roasted Paul about it in his attack “How Do You Sleep?” (“Jump when your mama tell you anything” — you’re one to talk, dude.) Mick Jagger sniffed that he’d never let his old lady in the band, a line that really got under Paul’s skin. But he saw Linda as an artist — one of the music world’s most successful and respected photographers. Paul took pride in snagging such an accomplished partner — see that great moment in Get Back when he introduces her to one of the cameramen, and boasts, “Linda’s a cameraman.” John and Paul got an ego boost over their wives’ independent preexisting artistic careers — something these men did not have in common with any other male rock stars of their generation, to say the damn least.
It’s hilarious to see the Wings blokes in this documentary, still complaining that they didn’t get enough creative input. But those were the Seventies — random ham-and-eggers hired to back up Paul McCartney could declare themselves shocked, shocked, that they weren’t on equal billing with the guy who wrote “Hey Jude,” not to mention the Beatle who kept lecturing George Harrison on how to play guitar.
“He wants you to be all normal and equal,” grouses one of the band’s many drummers. “But you ain’t normal and equal, because he’s the world’s superstar, and you’re a dog-faced nobody.” To be blunt, it’s a complaint that invites a “yes, and?” louder than the final chord of “A Day in the Life.”
Yet he was committed to democracy, even when that meant letting the others sing and write grotty tunes like “Medicine Jar.” Imagine going to the Wings Over America tour in 1976, then seeing Denny Laine sing a Simon & Garfunkel cover. (On the live album, you can practically hear the stampede to the bar.) There’s a great Wings photo that fans cherish — a day in the Scottish highlands, the family farm, Paul and the band playing a jolly game of footie while his sheepdog muse Martha joins in, chasing the ball. His bandmate’s face says it all: I signed up to play with a Beatle, tour the world, party with chicks, so why exactly does my job description now require playing with the boss’ dog?
When he and Linda released Ram in 1971, it was universally hailed as one of the worst albums ever made. Hell, even Ringo made fun of it. “I don’t think there’s one tune on the last one, Ram,” Ringo declared. “I just feel he’s wasted his time. He seems to be going strange.” Even Mr. Octopus’ Garden had to draw the line when it came to “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.”
During Wings’ lifetime, Band on the Run was universally regarded as their masterpiece, while Ram was considered on the aesthetic level of Martha coughing up a hairball. It took 40 years for the music world to collectively decide that Ram was an art-rock masterpiece, to the point where it’s now twice as famous as Band on the Run. (Me, I’m a Venus and Mars man. “Love in Song,” baby.)
A few years ago, I went to a McCartney show in Brooklyn, where he introduced the 1970s deep cut “Letting Go” by asking, “Any Wings fans in the house?” The twentysomething couple next to me roared; they explained that they liked his first band OK, but it was Wings they were really into. (I later mentioned it to McCartney in an interview, a story he tells in his 2025 Wings book.) Like every Beatles story, this one is always changing, always taking new turns.
Paul made so many shocking decisions in his twenties that nobody else in his boots would have made. The biggest one, of course: Linda. He was only 26, a rich and dashing young rock star with groupies galore and his whole life ahead of him, when he fell madly in love with Linda and decided she was the one. He converted to monogamy overnight, with no second thoughts, even though he’d never been faithful to anyone in his life except John. The Seventies were the heyday of rock-star pleasure-dome excess — an era Paul had helped create — yet he spent the decade on the farm raising their kids. They remained inseparable until her death from cancer in 1998. The first night they ever spent apart was when he went to jail in Japan, in 1980, after getting busted with cannabis at the Tokyo airport.
Paul’s choices in the 1970s — playing in the band, doting on his wife, “Mary Had a Little Lamb” — were a worldwide joke. He knew everyone was laughing at him. John mocked him. Mick mocked him. George — well, you can guess. He just didn’t care. Paul and Linda are the only Seventies rock stars whose tour photos show them pushing strollers through the airport, instead of clutching bottles of Jack Daniel’s, with toddlers and infants in tow — both parents wearing great big smile-away grins on their faces that not even their superhuman weed intake can explain.
That’s the power of Man on the Run — in so many ways, it’s a love story, yet a deeply mysterious one. It turns out to be one of those silly love songs that keeps going until it isn’t silly, it isn’t silly, love isn’t silly at all.
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