You’ve conquered the world, made piles of money, and the band you started with your Liverpudlian mates has blazed a trail that makes them cultural heroes and the most lauded rock outfit ever. You’re only 27 when the band splits acrimoniously. Now what?
By Miles Salter
Man On The Run captures Paul McCartney’s 1970s decade, using archival photos and footage to tell his story between 1969 and 1980. The film is bookmarked by two pivotal events – the break-up of The Beatles and the death of John Lennon in December 1980.
Following the end of The Beatles, McCartney was something of a broken man, hiding in his remote farm in Scotland and drinking too much whiskey. But he soon starts to bounce back, writing songs and making his own recordings. He starts a family with his wife, Linda, adopting her daughter, Heather.
The photos from their rural world offer a family scrapbook – gorgeous shots of a simple, secluded life, looking after livestock and enjoying his sheepdog Martha (the song Martha My Dear on The White Album was inspired by the shaggy hound). The children seem to have enjoyed an idyllic few years, away from the spotlight.
His early solo efforts were not always greeted with wild enthusiasm. One of the funniest moments in the film is Nick Lowe talking about McCartney’s 1972 version of Mary Had A Little Lamb. Lowe was singularly unimpressed with this saccharine ditty, a symbol of McCartney’s cutesy songwriting. Grittier was Live and Let Die, released in 1973, before a return to the sweetness of 1978’s Mull Of Kintyre – the single sold by the ton.
Wings, the band he formed with Linda and Denny Laine, enjoyed huge success, although started in a somewhat amateurish way, pitching up at universities and charging 50p a ticket.
Things soon got more professional, and clips of them playing Madison Square Garden in the mid-1970s are vivid. McCartney could be a little ham fisted with his bandmates, though, who knew they were sidemen to the star of the show. He claims in the new documentary not to have known they were underpaid, which seems like a cop out. Several band members left under a cloud. There was tragedy, too – Wings guitarist Jimmy McCulloch died in 1979 of a heroin overdose, aged just 26.
I went along to this with my friend Richard. We counted the number of McCartney songs that we loved and struggled to get past eight, which isn’t that many in 56 years of recording.
The film stops just short of the early ‘80s, when McCartney scored hits with Ebony and Ivory, The Frog Chorus and Pipes of Peace. Personally, I love all those songs, but when I asked on Facebook recently why you never hear Pipes Of Peace on the radio, the responses were almost unanimous – because it’s dire. Hmmm. That doesn’t stop McCartney’s dreadful Wonderful Christmas Time from being trotted out every December.
The film nods at McCartney’s workaholic tendencies. Including live albums and compilations, he has released 40 albums and 112 singles during his career.
The film ends around 1980 with Lennon’s terrible slaying in New York. A traumatised McCartney, facing journalists that night, cannot bear to reveal his true feelings. There scene is paired with a sympathetic commentary by Sean, Lennon’s son with Yoko.
McCartney was always good at masking his more vulnerable side, projecting an image of success, but you can’t watch that clip without sensing the turmoil he was hiding. It’s unbearably poignant. In the film he speaks of his love for Lennon. (Ian Leslie, in his recent book John and Paul: A Love Story is very perceptive on this moment, and their relationship generally.)
The real hero of this story is Linda. She provided the calmness, ballast, and security that Paul and the children needed. Both had lost their mothers at a young age, as had John Lennon. (In fact, most of The Beatles’ inner circle had disrupted families of some sort.)
She played in Wings alongside Paul and looked after the children, who went on tour with the band. It was a circus of music and family. By the end of the ‘70s, they had four kids to take care of, and it was getting too much. It’s touching to see her constantly by Paul’s side – they were inseparable. ‘I was very lucky because I had Linda,’ McCartney says.
When Paul was arrested for marijuana in Tokyo, he spent a week under arrest while a patient Linda looked after the children. The people of Campbeltown in Scotland loved and respected her so much that, when she died, a memorial garden was built in her honour.
Kids of celebrities sometimes pay a high price for their background, but the McCartneys raised stable children. At the end, there’s a brief tribute to her when McCartney plays a snatch of Maybe I’m Amazed. Part of the commentary by Paul and Linda’s daughter Stella pays tribute to Linda’s calm, robust presence.
This is a very enjoyable film, and speaks quietly of true success, which is sometimes very different from being on stage or having gold records.
Man On The Run is in cinemas now and on Amazon Prime Video from 27 February 2026.
Miles Salter likes Pipes Of Peace, but don’t hold that against him. He lives in York, fronting the band Miles and The Chain Gang and writing various things.
