‘One Hand Clapping’ review: Paul McCartney and Wings doc shows a master at work

Words such as ‘legendary’ and ‘historic’ get tossed around in classic rock circles as readily as Turkish hair replacement recommendations these days. Sotheby’s regularly plays host to George Harrison’s “celebrated” shopping lists or John Lennon’s “mythic” nasal clippings. Case in point: no-one in your entire pub has been aching for decades to get a glimpse of Wings’ quote-unquote “historic” 1974 in-studio session, recorded while ‘Band On The Run’ was in its seventh week at Number One, intended as a potential live album and film, then canned for 50 years until it emerged as the ‘One Hand Clapping’ album in June. But as time goes on, any and all archive footage of Paul McCartney in the studio takes on magic and significance, even Wings’ grainy attempt at their own Let It Be.

• READ MORE: Let It Be review: The Beatles dust off their spellbinding 1970 break-up doc

“I’ve never been a solo performer, I’ve always sought out a group,” Seventies Macca tells us in voiceover early on. And, as the ancient videotape swirls and melts across the big screen like a cinematic flashback-fade, we find ourselves at Abbey Road, 1974, as a new line-up of Wings gets to know each other over a run-through of their biggest hits so far. McCartney, wife Linda and guitarist Denny Laine we already know, but introduced in potted quote biographies are awkward new guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and kung fu drummer Geoff Britton, captured karate-kicking around the studio between takes.

That ‘group’ conceit quickly proves something of a facade. In the one scene of inter-band discussion over takes, everyone clearly manoeuvres themselves around to Paul’s way of thinking, quick sharp – band members convinced they were knocking off for the day and halfway out the door suddenly become swift converts to Paul’s suggestion of one more take. But the music emerges lush and rich (“you can’t go wrong” at Abbey Road, 2024 Paul explains in a newly-recorded introduction), whether they’re hitting Mach 3 on ‘Jet’ or rolling gently across the luxuriant silken folds of ‘My Love’. Even the cod-reggae ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ sisterpiece ‘C Moon’ has a loping charm to it, transforming into a go-go rocker midway through.

The juxtaposition between sublime, truly “historic” moments of musical genius and everyday in-studio routine isn’t as stark here as it was in Peter Jackson’s Get Back series – this, after all, isn’t The Beatles at work, and there’s nothing close to the jaw-dropper of watching ‘Get Back’ written in real time while Ringo yawns along.

But there are flashes. A studio dog sniffs around dusty wires and amps during a wonderfully emotive ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’. Wings lark their way through a storming ‘Band On The Run’. An orchestra arrives to charge through ‘Live And Let Die’ as if for a Bond flick penned by Wagner. Much of One Hand Clapping feels like the knowing performance video it was always intended to be, but it’s these behind-the-curtain glimpses that stop you blinking throughout for fear of what you might miss.

Of most interest to the hardcore are two McCartney solo sections. One at a piano, clad in bow tie, where he explains how he’d written chintzy tunes like ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ because he expected to end up working in cabaret when The Beatles crashed and burned, and performs a marvellous little ‘20s-style ditty called ‘I’ll Give You A Ring’, written for Peggy Lee but unreleased until it turned up on the B-side of ‘Take It Away’ in 1982.

And, to pad out the film’s hour-long run time, there’s a coda of Paul playing acoustically in the Abbey Road garden, dropping the otherwise unreleased ‘Blackpool’ alongside Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly covers. Ultimately, everything McCartney has ever done will become genuinely historic, but it’s the fact that such fantastic moments were ever deemed throwaway that will make One Hand Clapping one for the ages.

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