Perhaps the most exciting moments for Beatles devotees come when McCartney digs deep into his relationship with Lennon. It comes as no surprise when the producer reveals that, as a teenager himself, he learned to meditate because it was something The Beatles did. At several points, including when McCartney offers to play him “Thinking of Linking”, the first song he ever wrote at age 14, Rubin literally sits cross-legged at the feet of the master.
He keeps his contributions to a minimum, just steering McCartney with enough questions and prompts to keep his memories flowing. Rubin is an excellent host for this format, which is another way of saying he knows when to shut up and listen. At one point, listening to “With A Little Help With My Friends”, Rubin observes: “It’s like a lead bass, essentially.” There’s a particular focus on a lesser-talked about aspect of McCartney’s genius: his inventive, melodic bass playing. The result is relaxed, loose and always charming. As McCartney and Rubin talk, they jump back and forth through his incredible career, touching on music from Wings and cult favourite album McCartney II as well as the old Beatles favourites.
McCartney 3,2,1 is by no means a definitive documentary about the life and times of the planet’s greatest living songwriter, but it doesn’t set out to be. The camera lingers on him as he air trumpets along, sheer ecstatic joy painted all over his face. The tale is one thing – the inside story of how an incredibly familiar piece of music came to be – but McCartney’s reaction to hearing the original recording played loud is quite another. McCartney tells the story of seeing trumpeter David Mason play a piccolo trumpet during a BBC broadcast of a Bach concerto and deciding he’d be perfect for a solo on “Penny Lane”. Take, for example, one of the series’ most delightful moments. Any fears that time and familiarity may have withered his excitement for the songs he wrote as a young man is quickly dispelled in the new three-hour docuseries McCartney 3,2,1, which captures the music icon in conversation with legendary producer Rick Rubin while listening to the band’s original master tapes, specially retrieved for the purpose from Abbey Road. It is really good, you know.Paul McCartney, now 79, has not been a Beatle for more than 50 years. Some famously familiar anecdotes are present, such as McCartney dreaming the melody of Yesterday, but they’re just starting points for longer reminiscences (McCartney did all of two vocal takes on the song) that can provide a welcome tonic for both the Beatles obsessive and the casual fan. Nostalgia is a risk with every vintage music documentary, but the energy and intimacy here mostly keeps it at bay.
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McCartney is full of praise for his bandmates, singling out their individual talents. He never pushes McCartney, and anyone who wants a reckoning for how the Beatles, and specifically McCartney and fellow songwriter John Lennon, fell apart won’t find it here. Rubin, who looks like a department store Santa on his mid-year holiday, sometimes sits at McCartney’s feet, cross-legged like a student, but he’s a keen host and knowledgeable fan. McCartney plays that chord, explaining how it eventually slotted into his own song, and the sound of music – played, heard, felt – is rarely absent from the narrative. The name of the jazz musician clerk temping at Hessy’s music store in Liverpool, who showed a young McCartney and Harrison a chord they didn’t know: “Frank Gretty”.
It helps that McCartney has a tip-top memory. Chewing gum and generally presenting as the coolest 79-year-old alive, McCartney is connected to the music and attentive to Rubin’s queries. The first episode starts without eulogies, just Rubin hitting play on All My Loving and engaging with McCartney as they stand at a mixing desk in a darkened studio space discreetly ringed with cameras.
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