November 3, 2026 – You were in the biggest band in the world, how do you follow that up with a second act? Anything you try is going to be a let down, but you really can't just give up and fade away, can you? Director Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom”) answers those questions and more with lots of contemporary interviews and lots of archival videos.

The answer to the second question comes first. Paul McCartney, a workaholic, starts working on new songs, a new album, and forming a new band even before the world officially knew the Beatles had broken up. John Lennon told the rest of the band he was leaving, but he never announced this to the rest of the world. McCartney finally had enough of the coverup and announced the band's breakup himself, and was subsequently blamed for the breakup.

McCartney had never liked the group's manager, Allen Klein, but was out-voted by the other Beatles when Klein was hired. On December 31, 1970, McCartney sued to dissolve the Beatles contractual partnership with Klein, but the matter was not settled until the end of 1974, when Lennon signed off on the settlement. In the movie, there is a clip of Lennon saying that McCartney may have been right about Klein all along.

McCartney had been in bands for much of his life, and after the Beatles, he wanted another one, so he formed Wings, and they began rehearsing and touring in much the same way the Beatles had started out. McCartney's idea was to make it so all the band members were equal, but they were not, in terms of pay, or otherwise. It was McCartney's band, and the other players were sidemen. That would lead to several band members quitting Wings over time.

McCartney and Wings would eventually become a very successful band in their own right, both on stage, and in the recording studio, but it would take time. The early albums were not well received, mainly because they were not Beatles albums. There was a lot of pushback from Beatles fans, the cult-like core of which were characterized by the term “Beatlemania.”

I was never a part of Beatlemania. I grew up a bit earlier, on the music of Elvis Presley, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Sly and the Family Stone, The Rolling Stones, The Doors and many others of the time. I was into Rock and Roll, and The Beatles were not a real rock band. They started out as a rock band, but quickly devolved into a group that produced music that reflects the pre-war era. This kind of music rankled John Lennon years before the Beatles split up, he called McCartney's song, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” “granny music shit.#8221; I agree. It's a fun song, but it sure isn't rock and roll.

Rock and Roll is dangerous music, defiant, revolutionary, and fast, four beats to the measure with a strong back beat. Elvis Presley was jailed for it. The Rolling Stones were censored for it, but the Beatles were safe, producing musical comfort food. As McCartney sings, he just wants to fill the world with silly love songs, “What's wrong with that, I'd like to know.” Nothing at all, but it seems far removed from the real world events surrounding the Beatles and Wings. People were dying in street protests and in Vietnam. Some Rock groups tackled those issues. McCartney, confronted with this dichotomy by an interviewer, says in the film, that some people can address serious political issues in their music, but he cannot. He's just not built that way.

Stung by criticisms of some of his post-Beatles music, McCartney took it as a challenge to create new music that would be popular enough to catapult Wings into the top of the music world again, and he did just that. Part of that challenge came from John Lennon who released a song with a shot at McCartney, saying “The only thing you did was Yesterday.” McCartney heard that, and thought “But all I ever did was Yesterday, Let It Be, Long and Winding Road, Eleanor Rigby, Lady Madonna. Fuck you, John.”

McCartney and Wings (what was left of them at this point) eventually produced their most successful album, “Band on the Run,” which went number one in the US and UK, and three hit singles. There was also a successful U.S. tour. The other three Beatles, Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr would have their own post-Beatles successes too, but none would match the commercial success of McCartney and Wings. McCartney had proved his point.

There is a lot more in this documentary about the rift between Lennon and McCartney, and how they got back together again, how McCartney reacted to Lennon's death, about McCartney's wife and family, McCartney's Liverpool roots, and a really nice song he wrote, “Mull of Kintyre” which sounds like a traditional Scottish song (of the slow, non-ribald and non-drinking variety).

The documentary is aimed mainly towards Beatlemaniacs, but anyone with a passing interest in McCartney and the Beatles will get something out of it. It is pretty well put together. It is not too obsequious, like the daft newscaster in the movie who said the breakup of the Beatles signaled the decline of the British Empire. As McCartney himself says in the documentary, this is mainly about McCartney growing up. This movie rates a B.

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Copyright © 2026 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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