Paul McCartney and Rick Rubin on the songs of The Beatles

Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Zachary Heinzerling’s six-part black-and-white documentary “McCartney 3, 2, 1,” in which ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and producer Rick Rubin take apart the classic songs of The Beatles, has been released on Hulu.

“These songs are so pervasive in our culture that we don’t even think about what they consist of. We think of them as: “that song.” – That’s what producer Rick Rubin, who serves as the interviewer here, says of The Beatles’ songs on “McCartney 3, 2, 1.”

Actually, Rubin himself revolutionized popular music, even somewhat. He and the Beastie Boys invented hip-hop for white boys. Combined rap with rock on Run DMC and Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.” Restarted Johnny Cash’s career, turning him from a country classic to an alternative rock hero. He’s a real guru in sound production, a guru he looks in the recent biographical series “Shangri-La.”

And in “McCartney 3, 2, 1,” Rick Rubin literally sits at Paul McCartney’s feet, in the shadow of a titan who talks about how great songs were created. For the most part, the producer says yes in response to the hero’s lines. But the few questions he asks lead the conversation in the right direction. The simple subject of “Where did The Beatles’ songs come from?” Rick Rubin and the filmmakers unfold in six half-hour episodes, detailing the Beatles’ teenage years, their formation as musicians, the intricacies of the studio craft and the influence of earlier music on their work. Paul McCartney had to talk to different interviewers. But it was in talking with perhaps the world’s foremost sound expert that the classicist revealed himself as never before.

The most interesting part of the show is when Rick Rubin gets to the sound desk and turns on The Beatles’ famous songs one by one. During filming, Rick Rubin had channel-by-channel recordings of the songs, including a variety of working takes, and he could not just listen to them, but adjust the mix by moving the sliders on the remote. Rubin and McCartney are on camera discussing individual instrumental parts and the intricacies of the arrangements at length.

It’s as if the filmmakers are taking it a level deeper than the usual conversations about The Beatles, which beat lovers have already learned by heart over the past 50-60 years.

Perhaps, the origin of the name of the album “Sgt. Pepper`s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (McCartney misheard the phrase “salt and pepper”) or the history of the song “Back In The USSR” (it was a parody of the Chuck Berry song “Back In The USA”) is not such a news to the fans. And purely musical parsing of songs has already received attention – for example, when The Beatles’ producer George Martin did the soundtrack for Cirque Du Soleil’s “LOVE” performance. But that’s not what’s important, it’s how the characters in the film listen to the songs.

And they listen like two teenagers listening to an old tape recorder. The movie begins with a scene where Rick Rubin asks Paul McCartney, “Do you want to listen to music?” Paul McCartney replies: “Come on, what do you got?” A common picture for a bygone era of physical media, when it was customary to listen to music together. But Rick Rubin turns on not just anything, but McCartney’s own song, “All My Loving.” And he listens to it as if for the first time, snapping his fingers, mimicking John Lennon’s rhythm guitar part, mouthing: “That’s country!”

Throughout the film, his characters spin old tapes with absolute teenage enthusiasm and react violently to successful melodic moves, high vocal notes or clever solos.

There is a documentary chronicle in the film, but it’s not the one that stays in the memory. We’ll see more of the chronicle. This year, Peter Jackson will release “The Beatles: Get Back,” a documentary about the recording of The Beatles’ “Let It Be” album. And “McCartney 3, 2, 1” is not even a movie, it’s a kind of podcast, a succinctly and very inventively filmed conversation between two grown men who, like children, can’t sit still when they hear a cool chord.

Did you know that there’s a place in the song “Michelle” where the tempo slows down, and that Paul McCartney overheard it from Edith Piaf in the song “Milord”? Have you ever listened to the aggressive bass line in “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”? Who takes the longest note in the vocal harmony of the song “Dear Prudence”? Where did the avant-garde orchestral part in “A Day In The Life” come from?

At first glance, this seems interesting only to music lovers. But Paul McCartney is a brilliant storyteller. When necessary, he sits down at the piano or picks up a guitar. However, the film’s most striking moments are when, when talking about the song, he uses only his voice and his hands. Playing the invisible “air guitar” is also a purely teenage story, after all. Because Rubin and McCartney are the kind of teenagers who never grow up.