The Beatles, The Beatles, The Beatles. It has been over 50 years since we first met The Beatles and we are still talking about The Beatles. Why? Because here again is another Beatles film. Who would think that there would still be people interested in making another Beatles film? Everybody I think who was ever close to The Beatles, or thought they were close, have already written books, made docus, given interviews, etc.
This means that almost everything there is to know about The Beatles has already been told or seen. Besides, the band was only active for a very short time, 1962 to 1967. But, in this case, the interested party is Apple. Not Steve Jobs’ Apple but the one that The Beatles themselves created as their music label ages ago. It is Apple Corps who is behind the new Beatles movie. Of course, it is not surprising that Apple would want to be the one behind a Beatles movie and to finally tell things as they really were. So what is there to tell? What is this new documentary all about?
Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years is made up of found footage, live performances and interviews scored with Beatles music, all of which have been restored to excellent quality. It is about the whirlwind years of 1963 to 1966 during which The Beatles performed in 250 concerts. Then because it has the blessings of Apple, it features reminiscences from Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. All very nice.
But I think the best thing about it is, it is directed by Ron Howard, who also did Apollo 13, Ransom and A Beautiful Mind. And I thought, if there is somebody who can mine something new out of the by now much delved-into life of The Beatles, then it will be Howard. After all, he did can create something suspenseful out of three men in the close confines of a spaceship, despite an outcome that is already known. It follows then that he can silence those belchers belly-aching about why have another Beatles movie.
Howard, who I believe is a Beatles fan, wonderfully captures the band’s rise to stardom from performing in theaters without a decent dressing room or bathroom to occupying the entire floor of the Plaza Hotel in New York. But he gives this a twist. Because of the big number of fans eager to see or worse, touch them and the production and security people surrounding them those four boys and they were just really boys, locked themselves inside a bathroom to get away.
Nothing much to that really. The mass hysteria that came in their wake is already an accepted fact. But I found the scene very revealing. It showed that John Lennon, McCartney, George Harrison and Starr were back then friends who genuinely liked one another. Harrison did say that he always pitied Elvis because there was only one of him? What about only child Starr’s reaction to being surrounded by three boys all the time? Suddenly, he had brothers.
I think that is one thing that everybody reacts positively to. They were boys having fun and it was wise of Howard to keep his focus on those moments. Innocence then was rife and the chance to play was all that the Beatles wanted. Those are what those who were there want to remember. Those are what they want to show later generations. Not the unpleasantness that would come only a few years later. Eight Days a Week makes good testimony that there is not one among the later boy bands who can equal what it was like back then with The Beatles and why they shared a certain closeness.
Another one is that they were really good. Songwriter Howard Goodall likens Lennon and McCartney to Mozart or Sibelius, geniuses sent to Earth to blaze new trails once in a century or so. I admit that given the quality and mass appeal of the music they produced I am inclined to believe that. Howard also presents ample evidence towards this belief like the sight of 55,000 fans trooping to the Shea Stadium or to the Candlestick Park to watch The Beatles perform or just as many football fans launching into She Loves You at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium.
I am sure there are Beatles scholars around who would know how much of Eight Days a Week was new or had been rehashed from other sources. I am sure some would gripe. But I am sure there are many more who are like me and couldn’t care less. What Howard has put on film here is a moment, a time that we all continue to wonder about. Eight Days a Week says that it really happened.
Aside please, because I can’t get the thought out of my head. How on Earth did The Beatles perform in those concerts without ear monitors? Those lads must have been really blessed.