Paul McCartney Knows Why All the Failed Beatles Biopics Didn't Do the Music Justice
McCartney is an incredibly meticulous musician. He oversees every step of the making of his songs, and has done so since the early days of his songwriting partnership with John Lennon. Whenever he felt a movie didn't do their music justice, he wasn't shy to say so. The cast and crew working on the upcoming biopics have a difficult task on their hands, as their biggest inspiration might just be their biggest critic.
Paul McCartney Wasn't Happy With Previous Beatles Biopics
When it comes to having his life portrayed on screen, it makes sense that Paul McCartney would be protective. The Beatles' legacy has certainly exceeded any individual person, but that doesn't mean that the people involved aren't real humans who will be affected by any inaccuracies shown to the world. McCartney doesn't usually seem that concerned with the way he's perceived by the public. He's in his 80s, and for the past 60 years, he's been one of the most recognizable and revered musicians in the world. So, safe to say, he has thick skin.
"One of my annoyances about the film Backbeat is that they’ve actually taken my rock ‘n’ rollness off me," he complained. Not only did they wash him as a musician, but they also got things wrong about The Beatles' creative process. They credited John Lennon for things that McCartney actually did, maybe because they felt it fit him better, and that annoyed the bassist to no end, because he feels that it's now forever in the public's mind.
"They give John the song Long Tall Sally to sing and he never sang it in his life. But now it’s set in cement. It’s like the Buddy Holly and Glenn Miller stories. The Buddy Holly Story does not even mention Norman Petty, and The Glenn Miller Story is a sugarcoated version of his life. Now Backbeat has done the same thing to the story of The Beatles."
How Will The Upcoming Biopics Be Different?
Despite his past reluctance to the previous projects revising The Beatles' story, Paul McCartney has recently been getting more involved in new works of art about his band's legacy. In 2021, he worked alongside Peter Jackson to release The Beatles: Get Back, a three-part, 8-hour-long documentary made from the footage used to make the 1970 movie Let It Be. This project allowed him and Ringo Starr to not only set the record straight about what the making of that album was like, but also to share the last Beatles song, Now and Then, with the world.
Source: collider.com/Val Barone
