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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. A new documentary about Paul McCartney, his life after the breakup of the Beatles, and the formation of his band Wings is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
The film was made by our guest Morgan Neville. He also directed documentaries about Fred Rogers, Anthony Bourdain, and Orson Welles, as well as many prominent musicians, and has won an Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy. Morgan Neville spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado. Chances are Morgan Neville has made a documentary about music that you love.
He won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Grammy for Best Music Film for 20 Feet from Stardom, his portrait of the backup singers whose voices helped define rock and pop music while remaining largely invisible. His latest film is about one of the most visible musicians, Paul McCartney. If I hear someone damning Paul McCartney, I tend to agree with them.
So when everyone was saying I broke up the Beatles and I was just overbearing and all of that, I kind of bought into it. I thought that's the kind of bastard I am. It leaves you in this kind of no man's land. But the truth, John had come in one day and said he was leaving the Beatles.
Chapter 2: What is the focus of the documentary 'Man on The Run' about Paul McCartney?
He said, it's kind of exciting. It's like telling someone you want a divorce. The film Man on the Run covers a time in McCartney's life that isn't often the focus, his life around the breakup of the Beatles.
He was newly married to Lyndon McCartney, and he was trying to figure out who he was as a musician and as a person without his partnership with John Lennon, without the band that defined him since he was a teenager. Morgan Neville got access to previously unseen archival footage. We see McCartney in home movies with his young family, in the remote farmhouse in Scotland where they retreated.
We see him working on his early post-Beatles songs and on the road and on stage with his new band Wings. You may think you already know a lot about the Beatles, but chances are you'll still learn from Man on the Run, which features new interviews with McCartney, his daughters, John's son, Sean Ono Lennon, and other heavyweights like Mick Jagger.
Morgan Neville's other music documentary subjects include Pharrell, Yo-Yo Ma, Hank Williams, Bono, Keith Richards, and Johnny Cash. Morgan Neville, welcome to Fresh Air. Hi, great talking to you. Can you tell us about some of the archival materials that you had access to? I mean, it's crazy how much rare footage there was, a lot of it never seen before.
Some home movies capture very intimate moments. Yeah. I mean, the good thing is that Paul married a photographer, Linda McCartney. She not only took photos of everything, but they had home movie cameras and they documented a lot of their life. Even though they were living this rural farmer's life in Scotland, they sure took a lot of photos and footage of it.
And the texture of that life was just amazing to kind of see what they created and live in that world. And And it's part of the decision I made to not have on-camera interviews to do it all with audio was that the archive was so amazing that I just felt like I could be immersive in it. Right. You had new interviews that you did with people, including Paul McCartney.
You spoke to him a bunch of times. But we don't see them on screen. We just see the archival footage. Did anything else go into that decision to keep it audio-based? I mean, a few different things. It's like the two of us talking right now. There's nobody else here. It's just us. And we can have this casual conversation. And it's intimate.
And it's just different when you put cameras in people's faces. And on top of that, in filmmaking, when you don't have older people looking back... on their 50-year younger self, then the film becomes less retrospective and more present tense. So suddenly the film is a time period you're living through and you never break that spell. And I kind of loved what that did in the storytelling.
And on top of that, I said to Paul, you know, is there a moment at the very end where we see you today? And he said, I don't want to be an old person in a young person's story. And I thought that was very wise. And I couldn't argue with it. So I completely understood that. Near the beginning of the film, you put text on the screen that reads, Fall 1969. John quits the Beatles, but nobody knows.
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Chapter 3: How did Paul McCartney cope with the Beatles' breakup?
Now he was writing them for who? For Paul McCartney. Well, who's Paul McCartney as an artist? And he has an acoustic guitar and an upright piano. And so he's starting to figure this out. Really, in the beginning, he's just kind of experimenting. He gets a four-track machine installed in his house, which now that's very common.
It has been for a while, but back then, nobody had a four-track machine. Paul would take the microphones and plug them directly into the back of the machine with no mixing board. And he would make these little charts of how to record songs. And sometimes he'd just be improvising and just singing about what his life was, which was his new family, his wife, the farm.
And he starts writing all of these songs, which, as Paul says in the film, it's the best form of therapy there is because song is where you get to – understand how you feel. The songs tell you and help you process how you're feeling. And so he ends up putting together this whole batch of songs
Very casually, until at the very end, he has the idea for one more song, which is the song Maybe I'm Amazed, which he goes into Abbey Road and does a proper job on, I guess, though he plays all the instruments himself still at Abbey Road. But I think he knew that song needed special treatment. Well, let's hear a little bit of that song. Here's Maybe I'm Amazed.
Maybe I'm amazed at the way you love me all the time Maybe I'm afraid of the way I love you Maybe I'm amazed at the way you pull me out of time You hold me on the line Maybe I'm amazed at the way I something that he doesn't really understand maybe i'm a man maybe you're the only woman who could ever help me maybe won't you help Maybe I'm Amazed from Paul McCartney's solo album released in 1970.
What did Paul McCartney tell you about writing this song in particular? I think that there's something in that in the film. Yeah, I mean, the song is really a thank you to Linda, you know, and again, it's so interesting, you know, because Linda has always been a very two dimensional character in the world because she didn't give many interviews at all.
And she was vilified, you know, as Yoko was vilified. And it's interesting that, you know, John and Paul both married these very strong women who are artists in their own right. Linda was a photographer. Who are a little older than them, who are divorced and already have children. And they start making families and music with them. So they become partners because –
They needed some kind of ballast for themselves. And Linda becomes kind of the center of his life, both as his wife, as a musical collaborator, which is really her role as kind of his first audience member. Let's talk about the formation of the band Wings. After playing with Linda, Paul decides to bring in musician Denny Lane and other musicians to start recording.
And it seems like Paul wants to be in a band again. You know, he wants to play. And just a reminder that, you know, the last Beatles tour ended in 1966. After that, essentially, they were playing music in studios. So As Paul starts Wings, instead of playing big stadiums, they go on a bus and tour universities. They would just show up and play.
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Chapter 4: What archival footage was used in the documentary?
And, you know, so he starts Wings, you know, with Denny Lane, who had been in the Moody Blues, who he knew, and a couple other musicians, Denny Cywell and Henry McCulloch, who had played with Joe Cocker. And they were a great band. But these guys initially thought, oh, we're going to be in Paul McCartney's new band.
And Paul kept saying, you know, I'm just going to be the bass player and we're all going to be in it together. And so they end up moving up to his farm in Scotland. And, you know, hanging out with sheep and, you know, kind of living this rural life. And Paul's resisting playing big shows for a long time. And it's part of what starts to cause the friction in Wings right from the beginning.
The 1973 Wings album, Band on the Run, is more successful and causes the band to tour the world. It's a different lineup at this point, but Wings becomes a touring band and Paul starts performing for large numbers of people.
And, you know, I can imagine being Beatles fan in the 70s wanting to hear Paul play Beatles songs at a wing show and then being disappointed to not hear any because, you know, when they first started, he wasn't doing that. But eventually he did start playing them. Here's another scene from the documentary with a bit of a news broadcast at the time and then an interview with Paul.
The McCartney Show is getting two encore calls a night, and the highlight every concert is yesterday. At one time in Wings Tours, Paul refused to do any Beatles songs. Now, with most of the legal troubles behind him, McCartney was comfortable selecting Beatles tunes for the Wings Show. I'll tell you the truth, it was too painful. It was too much of a kind of trauma.
It was like reliving a sort of weird dream, doing a Beatles tune. That's a scene from the film Band on the Run. It's interesting what Paul says there about playing Beatles songs. I don't know if that's a new interview or an archival one, but I was wondering what Paul says about that transition now.
Yeah, I mean, it was that is an archival interview, you know, that Paul, not just in the live shows, which, you know, he doesn't do Beatles songs for a while. Then finally, when they're doing the big global tour in the mid 70s, he puts in a handful of Beatles songs in the middle of the set. You know, which people are all just waiting for, dying to hear the songs played live.
But, you know, Paul is consciously trying not to do Beatles music, Beatles sounding music, particularly in his first few records. You know, self-consciously taking songs that sound too much like the Beatles and changing them or not recording them. So he's running away from that idea. shadow. He's trying to find distance.
And I mean, that's why I called the film Man on the Run is that it's a shadow you can't escape from. But it's something that he feels like he has no choice but to try and find that separation. And, you know, I think what you see in the documentary also is that every concert, every interview, all people were wondering is, are the Beatles going to get back together?
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Chapter 5: How did Paul McCartney begin to redefine himself as an artist after the Beatles?
And that was the experience of making the film over a couple of years was just building up enough trust to get closer and closer to finally kind of get a glimpse of what's inside. Lauren and his natural habitat. Exactly. I can't wait for that one. Morgan Neville, thank you so much for talking with us. Absolutely. Great talking to you. Morgan Neville spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenado.
His documentary, Man on the Run, is available on Amazon Prime Video. His next documentary, Lorne, about Lorne Michaels, comes out next month. After we take a short break, our jazz critic Martin Johnson will review a newly discovered 1982 concert recording by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. It's been released as an album titled Strasbourg 82. This is Fresh Air.
Long before jazz studies were a staple in many college curricula, drummer Art Blakey ran one of the most prestigious and demanding universities of jazz, his band. Alumni of his groups, from Wayne Shorter in the 50s to Wynton Marsalis in the 80s, could fill the programs for a week's worth of all-star concerts.
Blakey's 1982 band, which formed shortly after both Wynton and his brother Branford Marsalis left, is less celebrated, but a newly discovered concert recording makes a case for its greatness. That live recording has been released as an album titled Strasbourg 82. Jazz critic Martin Johnson says, you can hear the maturation of the players and the growth of the band.
There have been so many extraordinary iterations of our Blakey and the Jazz Messengers that some remarkable additions have tended to get overlooked. I think that's the case with the 1982 band.
Yet, like most Blakey bands, it featured future stars, in this case, trumpeter Terrence Blanchard, who's lately found renown as an opera composer, and alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, who's become an elder statesman of traditional New Orleans music.
The band featured some stellar players whose renown never transcended jazz aficionado circles, like pianist Johnny O'Neill, heard there on the opening track. And here's a bit of his solo. By the early 80s, the Messengers had been an institution for decades, and the new players could create their sound from the lineage of their instrument.
Here, on the Benny Golson classic, Along Came Betty, we can hear Blanchard echoing legendary predecessors Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan with just a hint of 70s Blakey stalwart Woody Shaw. And we can hear the band increase the urgency of the tune. Originally a springtime walk in the park, it's now a chilly rush-hour commute home. No!
Jazz was changing in the early 80s, and this band reflected some of the changes. The Messengers were still a paragon of soulful, hard-popping jazz, but they were looking in new directions, and they found it with 81, a staple of Miles Davis' second quintet. It's looser and more laid-back, but a good fit for tenor saxophones Billy Pierce, who likely grew up loving those Davis bands. . . .
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