Man on the Run (2025)
This documentary on Prime Video was suggested by a family member. I would have got around to it eventually, but the prompt moved the viewing forward by weeks, if not days.
There’s something about history when you live through the events of the past: you end up watching it unfold knowing full well where the story goes. In this case, Paul’s narrative, and subsequent interviews reveal a very fragile time in his life when the Beatles broke up. It’s not hard to put yourself in his place.
I remember seeing a cartoon at the time of the breakup that showed the other members of the Beatles quietly leaving the group but ending with Paul saying that he quit. Forever and a day, he has been blamed for their breakup, when in fact it was the rest of the group who quit first.
Now, let’s address the elephant in the room. Paul’s music in the first couple of years after the breakup was not very good. But his innovation of playing all the instruments during his homemade recording sessions opened up a brand new chapter of how music could be made. But it wasn’t really until “Band on the Run” that the public finally took notice of his continuing talent as a singer-songwriter. In the meantime, true Beatles’ fans bought anything and everything that the individual members produced during those early years. I was one of those fans. I even bought “Back to the Egg” which was considered Paul’s worst album. But his new group Wings took off with their tour “Wings Over America”. From 1975 to 1980, Wings were the band to beat. Then Paul screwed up, trying to bring pot with him into Japan. The song “Band on the Run” turned out to be prophetic. Wings dissolved. Paul, Linda and Denny Laine continued to make music together from then onwards and the documentary ends with John’s murder in 1980.
The Beatles could never reform after that event.
cdsmiller17 