PAUL McCARTNEY Q&A SESSION AT THE PREMIERE OF "MAN ON THE RUN"

Helmed by filmmaker Morgan Neville, this Prime Video documentary tracks McCartney’s transition into a solo artist and the subsequent turbulent years with his band, Wings. The event drew a star-studded crowd of McCartney’s inner circle, with high-profile guests such as Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller, Chrissie Hynde, and Sharon Osbourne in attendance.

“Oh God, there are so many bits in it that are so embarrassing,” Paul said in the Q&A. “You know, ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ with the little red nose, and the look on Henry McCullough’s face. He’s not happy! So I was thinking, ‘Well, maybe we could just cut those bits… Maybe I should just cool out my image and just lose those bits.’ And (Neville) said, ‘No no, let me keep them in because you’ll see all of that stuff, and then the fact that you overcame it all and found yourself in the end, and won.’ “It’s natural to me to be very enthusiastic about something, so I don’t always see the pitfalls, because I’m not looking for them. ‘Hey, let’s make some music!’ I just enjoy it. So you know, that’s me. That’s how I do it.”

When asked which part of the film surprised him the most, an emotional Paul replied:“I think all the stuff with the kids and Linda, you know, is lovely to see. I mean, obviously the Linda stuff was very emotional, because she looks so beautiful… she’s so cool. So that comes over. If there were ideas that were a little bit crazy, I’d say, ‘Should I do that? Could I do that?’ And she’d say, ‘It’s allowed.’ And it was like, ‘Yeah, that’s brilliant.’ It’s a great philosophy in life: ‘It’s allowed.’”

Paul also expanded on his relationship with The Beatles… “I loved (John Lennon), you know, I loved all the guys in The Beatles. We had so much in common, and we were like a little magical foursome. I try and think of how else it could have been, just with me, John, George and Ringo, it was a magic grouping. And we did OK.”

A lot of the McCartneys’ home movies were used—footage that Paul himself thought had been lost forever… “I thought I’d lost it all, because in the in the ’60s and ’70s, you’d have a lot of break-ins where you wouldn’t really bother locking your door too much. So fans would come in and just nick a lot of stuff. That was how it was! But the kids in my office looked in every storage unit and every little drawer and they found it all.”

“Next to a presidential library,” added Neville, “Paul has the best archive, and I got very excited. It also helped that you married a photographer too, because Linda took pictures of everything and took home movies.”

“It’s a heck of a story,” said Paul, “so I think it would be nice if people took away that in my craziness and my enthusiasm, that we did this crazy story, but we stuck with it, and we made it work. So there’s something brave about that. It didn’t have to work out, you know, but it did.”

Man On The Run is in cinemas and on Amazon Prime Video from February 27.