McCartney and Camil

They burst onto the scene in the 1960s and '70s and are both going strong

Ahem, (putting on my announcer voice) I’ve got some important news below about my upcoming Substack livestream, which debuts this weekend, but first —

I was watching the new Paul McCartney documentary Friday, the day it started streaming on Prime, planning to write about it for those who, like me, can’t get enough of the guy. So here’s a short review:

You know how McCartney started a new band, Wings, in 1971, hoping it would enable him to move on from the Beatles, even though no one in the world would have paid much attention to the band if the guy from the Beatles wasn’t the one who started it, sang the vast majority of its lead vocals, and wrote almost all its songs?

And then he got frustrated because most of us viewed it as a band that didn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the Beatles if it weren’t for McCartney’s massive involvement.

Well, that’s how this movie, Paul McCartney: Man on the Run. is too. It begins with audio of the recording of “Silly Love Songs,” which pretty much sets the tone, and explores in detail such subjects as Paul’s quest to figure out his musical and personal identity after the Beatles’ breakup, and his finding personal peace and contentment with his family on their Scotland farm.

Nice stuff but not exactly gripping material.

Along the way, we learn Linda McCartney was the first person he asked to join the new band, even though she started out unable to play any instrument or be an impactful backup vocalist and ended up largely the same way.

Director Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) gives us contemporaneous voice-over only from Paul, his family members, some bandmates from Wings and a handful of others, including brief comments from Mick Jagger and more extensive ones from Chrissie Hynde. Hynde was founder and lead singer of the Pretenders, though that’s not mentioned in the film. She presumably was close with Linda through their shared love for animals and strong connection to PETA. That’s not acknowledged either.

More annoyingly, none of these people are ever shown on screen, except of course Paul and Linda, in archival footage. Perhaps Neville wanted to keep us focused on the past without showing a bunch of gray-haired, former rockers reflecting on it. Didn’t work for me.

The movie is most interesting during its infrequent lapses back into Beatles lore, especially during a time after their breakup where McCartney grouses about John Lennon’s diss track, “How Do You Sleep?.” He quotes Lennon’s line, “The only thing you done was ‘Yesterday,’” and bitterly responds, (I’m paraphrasing), “If all I ever did was ‘Yesterday,’ ‘Let It Be,’ ‘The Long and Winding Road,’ ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ ‘Lady Madonna’...

“How do I sleep at night? Well, actually, quite well.”

It was an authentic glimpse of a side of McCartney the film deals with early — how badly he was stung by Lennon’s criticism and the public perception of him as the prima donna who broke up the Beatles.

Unfortunately, we get too little of that and too much hagiographic treatment of Paul as the poor misunderstood superstar.

You’d think people would’ve had enough of silly love songs, but when it comes to McCartney, we can see it isn’t so.

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If I had switched over to CNN when I finished watching the movie, I would’ve learned the disturbing news that our fearless leader in the Whites-only House had pulled the trigger on what may be turning into another cataclysmic U.S.-Mideast war.

Of course, there are other interpretations of these rapidly unfolding events. My Israeli friends are cautiously optimistic, and I’m sure, millions of Persians, both in Iran and here in “Tehrangeles,” are elated to see the death of the man who helped transform their great civilization into a miserable center of corruption, repression and terror.

The story is just beginning, though, and it might well continue for years.

So what better time to announce the first guest on my upcoming Substack livestream, the renowned antiwar activist, Scott Camil.

If you don’t know Camil from his days as regional head of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, his extensive testimony about the war before Congress, his unsuccessful prosecution in the Gainesville Eight conspiracy trial of 1973, or his targeting and near-murder by the Drug Enforcement Administration two years later, you can read about him here in one of my previous posts.

We’ll be talking more about his fascinating personal history, as well as his take on current events and, I hope, how we can help shape them. The livestream is set for this Sunday at 2 pm Pacific time and 5 in the East. (We’re switching to Daylight Savings that day too, so don’t forget to spring forward the night before.)

I’ll figure out how to re-post the session when we finish, but only those watching live will be able to key in questions and comments in real time, and we’ll address those as well as we can.

The stream will be open to everyone — paid and free subscribers, as well as those checking in for the first time. Of course, it’s the paid subscribers who make it all possible, so please, do your best to help keep this thing going, both in text and, starting Sunday, with monthly live audio/video guest conversations.

We’ll see you then!