Meyer is a Duluth architect and community builder writing about Downtown Duluth, politics, business, sports and economic development. Reach him at tim.meyer@meyergroupduluth.com
I watched a documentary on Netflix last weekend about Paul McCartney and his post-Beatles band, Wings, and it landed with the kind of quiet force that doesn’t ask for attention but earns it. The film traces McCartney’s attempt to rebuild after the breakup of The Beatles, a cultural event so seismic it was once compared to the end of an empire. What it reveals, more than anything, is not the story of fame regained, but of something far more elusive: a man trying to reclaim himself.
For those who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, McCartney and John Lennon were more than musicians. They were voices of a generation that believed music could carry ideas — about peace, about love, about the possibility of a better world. Lennon’s “Imagine” still resonates decades later, not because it is nostalgic, but because it remains unfinished business.
My own introduction came early. I was five years old when my uncle placed oversized headphones on my head and played “Let It Be.” The sound was immediate and overwhelming — a voice that felt timeless, familiar and entirely new all at once. It was the moment music stopped being background and became something essential. From then on, it was simple: there are only two kinds of music — good and bad.
The documentary revisits the rise of the Beatles, a phenomenon without precedent or equal. Their sound — rooted in American blues, R&B and early rock — returned across the Atlantic transformed, amplified and reimagined. It did not build gradually. It arrived all at once, reshaping culture in real time.
What followed, however, is the more interesting story.
Wings began not as a continuation of greatness, but as a reset. McCartney started over with a smaller band that included his wife, Linda. Early reaction ranged from skeptical to dismissive. Critics questioned the music. Fans questioned the direction. But the point was never perfection. It was freedom — the chance to create without the weight of expectation that came with the Beatles’ name.
Behind that effort was a deeper need.
At the height of his fame, McCartney sought refuge on a farm in Kintyre, Scotland. It was there, away from the machinery of celebrity, that he found something closer to normal life. When a photographer tracked him down, McCartney reacted not as a global icon but as a man protecting his space. The encounter ended not in conflict, but in a compromise that produced some of the most personal images of his life — a husband, a father, a musician at rest.
He was later asked a simple question: What does a man who has had everything want? His answer was equally simple: peace of mind.
It is a striking response from someone who had already achieved what most spend a lifetime chasing. Fame, fortune and global recognition did not satisfy the deeper need for quiet, for distance, for the ability to exist without being watched.
The film also touches on the personal cost of that fame. McCartney struggled in the years after the Beatles, including battles with alcohol, before stabilizing with Linda’s support. Their partnership — often criticized in public — became central to his recovery and his creative renewal. In that quieter space, he wrote prolifically, producing work that stood on its own rather than in the shadow of his past.
Wings, in time, grew into a global act, filling arenas across Europe, Australia and the United States. The success returned. So did the attention. And with it, the very pressure McCartney had tried to escape.
That tension — between public adoration and private peace — never fully resolves.
McCartney and Lennon eventually reconnected before Lennon’s death in 1980, according to those close to them. The partnership that defined an era never returned, but the bond, it seems, never disappeared. Their music, detached now from time and circumstance, continues to outlive them both.
The documentary does not argue that fame is hollow or that success is meaningless. It suggests something more grounded: that even at the highest level, the pursuit does not end. It simply changes shape.
The most famous man in the world did not ask for more success. He asked for something quieter, more fragile and far more difficult to hold.
Peace of mind.
