The Bea­t­les: Eight Days a Week – The Tour­ing Years

In 1966, with ​‘Revolver’, ​‘Pet Sounds’ and ​‘Blonde on Blonde’ all fresh­ly pressed and Flower Pow­er still a good 12 months off, The Bea­t­les played their last ever con­certs in Amer­i­ca. Direc­tor Ron Howard, ful­ly aware of the momen­tous­ness of this chap­ter in the band’s his­to­ry, seeks out those who were there for a wel­come look back at this defin­ing era in pop music.

The Bea­t­les are well-known for their ground-break­ing stu­dio work with pro­duc­er George Mar­tin – less so, per­haps, as the über-tight tour­ing unit that became, to use a well-worn phrase, a licence to print mon­ey. The film takes us back to the ear­ly days of Liverpool’s Cav­ern Club and the heady days of Ham­burg – remark­ably, both cap­tured on film – to empha­sise the road-test­ed wor­thi­ness of the band and their cama­raderie. Paul and Ringo recall how close they were as friends, able to sur­vive in a tiny bub­ble (and even small­er hotel rooms) when­ev­er required. Com­pos­ing with Lennon, McCart­ney notes, was ​“like look­ing in a mir­ror” – one left-hand­ed, the oth­er right, with lit­tle time to stop and pause for breath.

After Elvis, the Bea­t­les lib­er­at­ed an emerg­ing youth cul­ture even fur­ther, cheek­i­ly spurn­ing author­i­ty at every oppor­tu­ni­ty, intro­duc­ing new forms of musi­cal and per­son­al expres­sion into pop­u­lar cul­ture, while still com­mu­ni­cat­ing direct­ly with their rapid­ly expand­ing audi­ence. Despite some famil­iar archive footage being colourised, Howard’s film mines the vaults effec­tive­ly to present rare and unseen footage of the band at the height of Beat­le­ma­nia. Can­did scenes and off-the-cuff audio from stu­dio ses­sions empha­sise how quick and fear­less the four of them were. As direc­tor Richard Cur­tis observes, they became the new bench­mark of cool.

The sta­tis­tics of their rapid suc­cess are taste­ful­ly pre­sent­ed, too, with­out clut­ter­ing up screen time. New albums, each top­ping the charts, were deliv­ered every six months. They were the first act to fill the entire top five sin­gles chart in the US, with a fresh 7” out every three months. Fol­low­ing Elvis’ path to suc­cess, appear­ing on US nation­al tele­vi­sion via The Ed Sul­li­van Show (with an audi­ence of 73 mil­lion), relent­less tour­ing and some cute movies (A Hard Day’s Night and Help!) ensured the Fab Four were megas­tars in Amer­i­ca by 1965. The pub­lic and the press couldn’t get enough. Until, inevitably, some­thing had to give.

Their sto­ry has been well cov­ered else­where, of course, via the band’s own exhaus­tive Anthol­o­gy series and the neat com­pan­ion piece, The First US Vis­it. Yet what Howard man­ages to do here is quite spe­cial, explor­ing a famil­iar nar­ra­tive with fresh insight and intro­spec­tion, rang­ing from a vis­i­bly emo­tion­al McCart­ney to Hol­ly­wood Bowl con­cert attendee Sigour­ney Weaver. Who knew Whoopi Gold­berg was a Bea­t­les fan? That itself leads neat­ly to reveal the band refus­ing to play to seg­re­gat­ed audi­ences in the South.

Per­haps wise­ly, the film focus­es on what made The Bea­t­les so unique. There’s no time spent con­sid­er­ing the post-tour­ing divi­sions that led to their messy break-up (and the tragedies that fol­lowed). This is more akin to an unashamed valen­tine to Bea­t­le­dom, which grad­u­al­ly hooks you in. The film plays out with a pair of tracks from Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Let it Be doc (which some­how remains unavail­able on either DVD or Blu-ray), in which we wit­ness what could have been, had the band reunit­ed – or sim­ply played on. Fol­low­ing this, the exhil­a­rat­ing Shea Sta­di­um con­cert, restored from 1965, plays out in full.

The Bea­t­les: Eight Days a Week – The Tour­ing Years is in cin­e­mas 15 September.