It was 50 years ago that the Beatles performed in their last ever public concert and now, a new film looks back at the early touring years.
By: David Robson/Express
The Beatles final live
concert at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, Aug, 29, 1966. They ripped through
Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally, as they had a thousand times before, then
they were off. For the last time. The Beatles, the first band to make sports
stadiums their stage were turning their backs on stadiums, stages and live
audiences---forever. The crowd wasn’t told, nobody knew, maybe they didn’t
quite know themselves but one thing they did know: they’d had enough of it.
Back then, ‘audience’ is
not really the word to describe the spectators. They, mostly girls, didn’t go
to Beatles concerts to listen, they went there to scream. Nobody took in the
music and that included the Beatles. They couldn’t hear themselves play. It
was, said Ringo, it was turning them into bad musicians.
In 1963 a British
journalist, writing about the Moptops and their fans came up with the term
Beatlemania. It was no more than the truth. It really was a mania. Rudolph
Valentino had crowds of idolatrous women, Frank Sinatra had his bobbysoxers,
today’s celebrities court and complain about media harassment, but none have ever
experienced anything like this.
They were terrific together
in every way: sharp, clever, funny and quick. If John was the wittiest and had
edge, Paul was twinkly and charming and George and Ringo often had a good
line. Liverpudlians have a way with words and from the start their playing,
their singing, their harmonies, and their confidence were utterly captivating.
Whether you were a music fan or not, a teenager or not, a girl or not, From Me
To You struck a chord of recognition – this was something wonderful, something
special that we were going to love.
The moptop haircuts and
Beatle suits (forced on them by their manager Brian Epstein) helped too. We
knew we loved them, we didn’t yet know they were geniuses (or, as the late Ian
MacDonald, author of a great book on the Beatles says, Lennon and McCartney
together were “a genius”).
What we see in the Eight
Days A Week film is not so much their genius as songwriters, it’s the magic of
their presence and their brilliance as performers, their personality and the
evidence that they had something about them that nobody else has ever matched.
You don’t need to be looking through rose-tinted bifocals to see how magical
they were.
The
Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years, an enjoyable feature-length
film for release in cinemas September 21, captures the glorious madness of it
all. Whether were around at the time or not, it comes as a shock to see how
crazy it was. And even if you do remember, it’s a joy to be reminded how
utterly wonderful the Beatles were. They were a
brilliant
band, forged by Liverpool’s Cavern, numberless hours playing in Hamburg and on
the road. Through all the madness, the pressure, the travel, the work, the
interviews, the hysterical fans, the crazed love, the threats, what kept them
sane and sustained them was their four-in-oneness. And their influence
continues to this day.
The Beatles: Eight Days A
Week-The Touring Years will be released in the Philippines on September 21,
2016 through Solar Pictures.
Official Website
http://thebeatleseightdaysaweek.com/
Solar Pictures is on
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @solarpicturesPH
