Documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville’s breakthrough film, “Twenty Feet from Stardom,” gave voice to those in the shadows of pop music, the backup singers who made good records great in the ’60s and ’70s. He’d been making music docs for over a decade when he discovered that magic formula and won an Oscar for the film.

He showed us Pharrell Williams’ life story in Legos, but the joy of “Piece by Piece” was Williams’ voice — the candid face Williams was able to show when all he had to do was tape record his story, home life and conversations with friends, family and collaborators.

That’s what he does with his latest film, telling the oft-told-tale of The Beatles through Paul McCartney, off-camera and candid in fresh audio-interviews, with lots of archival interview footage, home movies and snippets of Linda Eastman, who married Paul, inspired him to step back from Beatlemania to make time for family and whom he summoned onstage to be in the band he formed after The Beatles — Wings.

The revealing, entertaining and touching “Man on the Run” covers the decade between The Beatles’ breakup and the murder of John Lennon.

McCartney begins with a candid quip about any time he hears someone dragging on Paul McCartney.

“I tend to agree with them.”

So he allows himself to be self-critical. He admits that his years of telling journalists and the various members he recruited for Wings that he “just want to be in a band again” wasn’t entirely true. A collection of the players treated and paid “like sidemen” and who quit Wings verify “the kind of bastard I am,” McCartney jokes.

Neville’s first McCartney tune on the soundtrack is a dig in that direction, too. Not many would claim “Silly Love Songs” transcends its title or would be a tune that might lead off a McCartney tribute.

In giving Linda McCartney “voice,” we’re treated to her utterly tone-deaf sing-alongs — not the infamous mike-feeds on stage reputing to mock her musical shortcomings that made the rounds, just her and Paul singing at home or in the rehearsal studio at High Park Farm, where they moved when he followed Linda’s post-Beatles-breakup advice.

“Let’s just go get lost.”

The rich American Eastman, whose marriage to “the cute Beatle” filled British streets with weeping girls and young women, is humanized and appreciated — a trouper who pitched in at her husband’s insistance and joined his band, but who had four children and toured without nannies, took photos and “made it all feel like family” even the members of Wings who quit admit.

She was there when he went on a post-Beatles drinking bender and when he stupidly packed pot in his luggage for Wings’ last-shot (he’d been banned after an earlier drug conviction) at touring Japan in 1980.

McCartney can laugh at “what an idiot” he was then (1980). But he settles more scores on the myth-vs-reality front about his lifelong friend John Lennon, who called The Beatles “a museum,” and quit.

“John broke up The Beatles. But I got the rap.”

Lennon’s insistence on the band’s hiring of shady operator Allen Klein to run their finances is rehashed and simple clips of Yoko Ono interrupting John in interviews about Klein and the breakup reinforce other theories for the split.

George and Ringo’s thoughts about all that aren’t covered here. They’re are all but invisible in this documentary.

But a subtext of this new account of an oft-told story emerges from the ’70s obsessive execessive cash offers, the endless reporting and (on Lorne Michaels’ “Saturday Night Live”) the begging and joking around about the elusive “Beatles reunion” so many craved.

“Man on the Run” lets McCartney underscore his case that it wasn’t necessary. He made some great music and his share of bubbly pop piffle in between long breaks. John created a handful of great songs despite his long sabbatical from recording and performing. George turned out classic tunes, and all of them pitched in to ensure Ringo had classics to sing and keep him on the pop charts.

The film resurrects little-remembered Wings hits — the Scottish-pipes flavored “Mull of Kintyre” — and revisits the glorious creation of “Band on the Run,” a whim inspired by a casual perusal of all the places EMI Music had recorded studios in operation.

Lagos? Nigeria?

Concerts, TV specials, “sidemen” and music videos tell the story of Wings.

The most revealing material is culled from home movies and TV interviews from the farm after The Beatles dissolved, resurrecting the simple “family” life Paul and Linda craved and made their reality. Their children speak and honor their late mother and all she accomplished and everything she had to put up with when she joined his band.

“What am I doing, singing with Paul McCartney?” Linda herself asked, echoing the abuse she took from fans. As we hear her sing along with Paul and Denny in intimate, offstage moments late in the Wings run, you have to admit she got a lot better.

McCartney eventually outlasted his ’70s label as “the uncool Beatle” — a businessman, musician with a work ethic and sentimentalist whose music stumbled through maudlin and inane periods as he kept churning out the hits.

And the sweeter portrait of Paul that emerges from “Man on the Run” goes beyond the “accomplished craftsman” and “songsmith” reputation and explains his prolific musical output from the ’60s onward. He works at it. But he’s never been a “workaholic.”

“We don’t ‘work’ music. We PLAY it. I’m a playaholic!”

Rating: R, drug content, profanity

Cast: Paul McCartney, Linda Eastman McCartney, Mick Jagger, Mary McCartney, Stella McCartney, Sean Ono Lennon, Nick Lowe, Denny Seiwel, John Lennon, Chrissie Hynde and Denny Laine.

Credits: Directed by Morgan Neville. An MGM/Amazon release on Amazon Prime Feb. 27.

Running time: 1:55