Rick Rubin is a producer of gigantic success, fame and power: he played a decisive role in defining the sound of the first hip hop, went from Slayers to Red Hot Chili Peppers, brought Johny Cash back to success, worked endlessly of leading artists. He has a long white beard and an air of a holy man, yet in front of Paul McCartney he looks like an excited fan, asking questions and religiously listening to the answers muttering from time to time “wow, incredible”.
McCartney, for his part, at 79 has the joyfulness of a little boy: he still gets excited when he talks about the moment he discovered a new guitar chord, showed it to John Lennon and used it to write Michelle, and admits candidly that he still has no idea what a deal it is. It only darkens a little when it comes to the breakup of the Beatles.
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McCartney 3, 2, 1 (on Disney +) comeback in six half-hour episodes what seems like one long chat between these two huge pop music personalities, and it works mostly thanks to its apparent simplicity. Everything is black and white, the two are in a room with a piano, a guitar, a mixer and little else. The discourse moves freely, without chronological scans, jumping from the Beatles to solo records: the central idea is to reconstruct the compositional process of the songs. Rubin loads one on the console, manipulates the track faders to bring out now one instrument now another, and asks McCartney how he came up with that bass line, how they created that certain sound, who played that bassline. ‘solo, and so on. McCartney draws on his boundless archive of anecdotes, sits down at the piano or picks up the guitar to play the song in its initial nakedness.
It all seems live, often in the background you can also see the operators with masks, but the director Zachary Heinzerling did a great job of framing and editing, discreet and effective, approaching and moving away in a targeted manner and helping to create an atmosphere intimate and relaxed.
McCartney 3, 2, 1
Zachary Heinzerling
Disney+