Tag Archives: Paul McCartney documentary

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McCartney

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Scott Fitzgerald? Dylan? Richard Ford? These loom large. But, for me, the most significant cultural figure is Paul McCartney. I was reminded of this again last Sunday as I sat in a packed Prospect cinema watching the post-Beatles documentary, Man on the Run. It asks, what happens after you leave the most important band in the world?

When I was a boy, the Beatles were a blissful part of my life. Mum played music in our home. She had the ‘Love Me Do’ single, which she bought in 1962. I loved the cartoon series and especially the opening credits, when they tried to outrun mobs of screaming girls. During this ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ played and it was the most exciting thing in my world. I understood little of their lyrics, but as I sat on the orange carpet in front of our boxy Pye television, their charismatic melodies sent something electric through me.

Paul is my favourite Beatle. It’s largely his endless optimism and sunny nature. Even at eighty-three, his hopefulness is his defining, irresistible trait.

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Following Paul through the 1970’s the film focusses upon his new band, Wings. Even without the Beatles, if he’d simply arrived in 1971, his catalogue would still be magnificent. Among my favourite ever musical moments is the soprano saxophone on ‘Listen to What the Man Said.’

Regardless of context or mood, I’m always uplifted by it. The saxophonist was Tom Scott and his very first take ended up on the song. With Claire’s consent, we included it on our wedding playlist. It’s golden light falling across a tropical beach.

Any time, any day
You can hear the people say
That love is blind
Well, I don’t know, but I say love is kind

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It agitated many that Linda was in her husband’s group. A common view was that she couldn’t sing, play keyboards, or contribute much, at all. The film naturally slants towards McCartney’s opinion. Another reason that I hold him in such boundless affection is his reflections on this and love. He speaks glowingly of her talents and her skills as a wife, mother and artist. In the cinema dark I thought of Claire and shed a tear when he stated that from his wife, beyond all her other gifts, he ‘learnt so much.’

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Lennon and McCartney were like brothers. Both lost their mothers young. They wrote bridges for each other. They argued ferociously. Reflecting upon their long partnership the surviving Beatle remarked how when things got out of hand, Lennon would sometimes take off his glasses, lay them on the table, smile across at him, and say, ‘Paul. It’s me, John.’

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I’ve long believed that one of the very best ways to spend half an hour is by listening to a Beatles record. Another fine investment is to immerse yourself in the boyish wonder and brightness of Paul McCartney’s subsequent music. Fifty years later, sitting in my cinema seat, that optimism still feels like the most exciting thing in the world.

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Carrickalinga, Abbey Road, and the Visionary Pub Schnitzel

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During our annual Carrickalinga getaway I took some conscripts to parkrun at Myponga Reservoir, and I think we all enjoyed our ensemble endeavour. With water, stern hills, and forest it’s a fetching but searching physical test. Leonard rambled over the finish line and Claire and Trish then came down the final hill, legs whizzing not unlike the Tasmanian devil (Taz) in the Looney Tunes cartoons. It was a succession of warm moments across a brisk morning.

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Cindy Lee is a Canadian band who’s come to recent global attention with their remarkable album Diamond Jubilee. It’s not on Spotify or vinyl but available as a single two-hour track on YouTube. Hypnotic and haunting, it evokes 1960’s girl groups and also features jangly guitars bouncing across its thirty-two songs. It put me in mind of buskers you might happen upon somewhere off-beat like Boise, Idaho.

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Alain de Botton is an author I love to re-visit and this year he’s been in frequent demand. With Claire and I in an unbroken, anticipatory conversation about overseas trips, I was keen to purchase a book of his I’d previously appreciated. On level two of Adelaide’s Myer Centre is the most excellent Page and Turner, a sprawling second-hand bookstore and from here I bought The Art of Travel. The exquisitely observed prose possesses a deep, almost meditative fluency, and early in this work, he depicts the wonder of flight:

This morning the plane was over the Malay Peninsula, a phrase in which there lingers the smells of guava and sandalwood. And now, a few metres above the earth which it has avoided for so long, the plane appears motionless, its nose raised upwards, seeming to pause before its sixteen rear wheels meet the tarmac with a blast of smoke that makes manifest its speed and weight.

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The glow from Glenelg’s SANFL victory continues. Given the ultimate margin of five points and with only one score in the final seven minutes, the tension was sustained at stratospheric levels. The sole behind came from Tiger forward Lachie Hosie hitting the post; itself among our game’s most theatrical events and a unique scoring outcome among world sports. Contrastingly, in rugby, soccer, and American football if a goal post is brushed, the ball’s destination is all that counts: inside the goal is good and deflected away means nothing. The notion of the behind as a reward for goal-kicking inaccuracy seems distinctly Australian and effectively announces, ‘That’s not a goal, but good effort. Here, have a point!’

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Amidst the Carrickalinga escape, we spent a stout hour aboard the Yankalilla pub beer garden. This was an instructive text with the conversation moving from Asian and European travel to domestic matters. Returning to the holiday home, we’re welcomed by an array of aromatic curries which had been patiently preparing themselves in that most spiritually comforting of appliances: the slow cooker.

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One Hand Clapping is a new Paul McCartney documentary I saw one Sunday with Max and his mate Ethan. It includes songs recorded in the Abbey Road studios for Band on the Run and we witness him playing the guitar, the bass, the piano, and singing in his honeyed, jubilant tenor. He appears ignorant of his own seemingly easy genius and captivating enthusiasm, and I was reminded of this: when his former band split, McCartney was devastated for more than anybody on the adoring planet, he loved the Beatles.

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Alex and his school friend Judd camped in the Adelaide Hills to make a found-footage horror film for which Alex wrote an 8,000-word script. A chief challenge over the three days would be keeping phones and video cameras charged at their powerless camp site. I overheard Alex explaining how to solve this problem they would, ‘go to the pub for a schnitzel and plug in their devices there.’ First words, first steps, first day at school. Add to the accumulation of milestones: first pub schnitzel.