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t’s widely believed that the Beatles didn’t get serious until 1966. That was the year of Revolver, their first “on purpose” LP masterpiece. Their conversation turned more potent – touching on hot button topics like religion, war, and race – and their minds expanded with the use of psychedelic drugs. Most crucially, they abandoned live performance, transitioning from mere flesh-and-blood figures on show at baseball stadiums to mystical artistes who dispensed vibrant works from their studio laboratory in Swinging London. This was the time of transition – pop to rock, moptops to men, black and white to color – that led to their seminal Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album the following year. Eight Days a Week is a retelling of the Beatles’ early tale, but in glorious Technicolor. Howard, whose affection for mid-20th-century history has been well documented with box-office hits like Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon and A Beautiful Mind, underwent an exhaustive search to recover long-lost footage, which was then restored to cinema quality. All assembled, the band’s story takes on the drama and scale of a Biblical epic that’s scarcely believable even half a century later. 1. Real-deal Beatles live footage is as awesome as you’d hope. Eight Days a Week opens with footage taken on November 20th, 1963, at Manchester’s ABC Cinema. Filmed as part of a Pathe News short entitled “The Beatles Come to Town”, the six-and-a-half minute clip captured the group performing “She Loves You” and “Twist and Shout” – and a crowd of young women hilariously overcome with ardor. It represents the first known color film to include sound of the band performing. Professionally shot, it provides a stunning opening to the documentary.
REAL-DEAL BEATLES LIVE FOOTAGE IS AS AWESOME AS WWW.RONHOWARD.COM/BEATLES
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n addition, Howard also makes use of the familiar footage taken at Liverpool’s Cavern Club on August 22nd, 1962. Filmed in black and white by the Manchester-based Grenada Television network, it shows the band mere days after Ringo Starr became a full-time member. 2. McCartney still gets misty discussing the first time Starr played with the Beatles. The Beatles famously included Pete Best on the drum kit during the early years of their career, but when he was too sick to make one of their Cavern gigs in February 1962, they called in another local stickman: Ringo Starr. The usually reserved McCartney became noticeably teary as he remembered the first time the Fab Four joined forces. “Bang! He kicks in, and it was an ‘Oh, my god’ moment. We’re all looking at each other going, ‘Yeah. This is it.’ I’m getting very emotional.” Starr himself offered an equally tender observa-
MCCARTNEY STILL GETS MISTY DISCUSSING THE FIRST TIME STARR PLAYED WITH THE BEATLES.
THEY WENT FROM SLEEPING IN ONE ROOM TO AN ENTIRE FLOOR OF THE PLAZA HOTEL AND THEN BACK TO ONE ROOM.
tion. “I’m an only child, and I felt like I suddenly had three brothers.” He would join his rock brethren for good in August 1962.
movie theater. Lacking any heat, they were provided with British flags for makeshift blankets on their bunks. After playing onstage all night, they would grab a few hours of frozen slumber before being awoken by the sound of that day’s picture show. “Hamburg was kind of messy, having to sleep all together in one room – there was no bathroom or anything,” recalled George Harrison. When the Beatles received their heroes’ welcome in New York City barely three years later in February 1964, they were put up at the ultra-luxe Plaza Hotel.
3. They went from sleeping in one room to an entire floor of the Plaza Hotel – and then back to one room. The Beatles’ living conditions during their first Hamburg residencies could nearly be classified as human-rights violations. For months the four lived in a windowless concrete-walled storage room in the back of a small
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he band and their entourage occupied nearly the entire 12th floor, including the 10room presidential suite. But despite the space, the four friends retired to smaller quarters. “We had the whole floor in the Plaza, and the four of us ended up in the bathroom just to get a break from the incredible pressure,” remember Starr. 4. The band made its U.S. radio debut thanks to a one teenager, the first American Beatlemaniac. Before their Sullivan appearance, the band was featured in a CBS Evening News segment broadcast December 10th, 1963. Marsha Albert was watching at home and liked what she heard. Although their latest single, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” wasn’t yet released in the United States, she obtained a copy from a British Airways flight attendant. Peeved that no one else had caught on to this great new sound, she wrote a letter to popular DJ Carroll James at Washington D.C.’s WWDC network reading: “Why can’t we have music like that here in America?” James appreciated Albert’s passion and invited her on his show to play her copy of the record. The station was inundated with requests for the song, forcing Capitol Records, the Beatles’ American label, to rush-release the song weeks earlier than scheduled.“There’s no doubt whatsoever that the Beatles would have conquered America anyway,” historian Martin Lewis told USA Today in 2004. “But the speed and magnitude of that stratospheric kickoff could not have happened without Marsha Albert. If the record had been released January 13th, as first planned, kids wouldn’t have heard it 20 times a day, as they did during the
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school break. It would never have sold 1 million copies in three weeks. There wouldn’t have been 10,000 kids at JFK to greet the Beatles. Marsha didn’t start Beatlemania; she jump-started it.” 5. Their first American concert had some major technical problems. Although their Ed Sullivan performance on February 9th, 1964 was far more iconic, the Beatles’ first true concert on American soil took place two days later at the Coliseum in Washington D.C. The arena was
configured for a boxing match, with the band playing a 35-minute, 12-song set in an un-roped ring at the center, while 8,092 fans watched, screamed and threw jelly beans from all sides. Though the arrangement ensured maximum ticket sales, it also meant that they would only face a quarter of the crowd at any given time. To fix this problem, they were forced to pause every third song and shift their microphones, amps and drums 90 degrees clockwise. The solution was clunky but successful – until midway through one move when Starr’s drum riser got stuck. In the footage he can be seen struggling mightily until collapsing with mock exhaustion. Lennon begins frantically shouting for the band’s trusty
Starr. “We didn’t play to those roadie, Mal Evans, “Mal! time. “I just think it’s stupid. people or that people – we You’ve got to turn these drums You can’t treat other human just played to people.” around!” beings like animals. That’s the way we all feel, and that’s 7. The Beatles filmed Help! in 6. Their 1964 tour was a trithe way people in England umph for civil rights. feel, because there’s never any the Bahamas to ward off the taxman. segregation in concerts and Though Eight Days a Week England – and if there was In contrast to the stark, delibdelves deep into the Beatles’ we wouldn’t play ‘em.” They erately claustromyriad of musical accommade good plishments, the documentary on their vow “WE WERE TOLD, ‘YOU’RE phobic backstage also touches on their for civil when the GOING TO FILM IN THE ambiance of the rights. The band’s first fulltour reached BAHAMAS. WRITE A Beatles’ first film, A Hard Day’s scale American tour in the Jacksonville, SCENE.’” Night, 1965’s late summer of 1964 brought Florida. Help! was a colorful, bigthem through the Deep South Seats at the Gator Bowl were budget splash that saw the and face to face with segreto be separated by race, but band traversing the globe. gation for the first time. The the band refused to perform Several of the foreign set foursome was shocked by until they were assured pieces were incorporated into the practice, and vehemently that the audience would be opposed it. mixed. Rather than risk a riot the plot to accommodate the Beatles’ own traveling desires. of disappointed Beatle fans, While understandable that McCartney made his feelings the promoters acquiesced, known to DJ Larry Kane, who integrating the venue and set- the Bahamas would make the accompanied the group on ting a precedent for all future Liverpool lads’ wish list, the their tour. “It’s a bit silly to seg- Beatle performances to come. location choice was actually an attempt to thwart George regate people,” he said at the “We played to people,” says
Harrison’s old nemesis: the tax man. “We all had meetings about tax structure and they would say, ‘Oh, you’ve got to put your money in the Bahamas,’” recalled McCartney. The band’s financial advisor had set up a tax shelter in what was then a British territory, requiring that he set up a residence there for an entire year. As a goodwill gesture, they sought to pay him a visit. “So when we were asked about the film we would say, ‘Can we go to the Bahamas?’” The Beatles’ word was law, and it was director Richard Lester’s duty to make it happen. 8. The Beatles’ record-breaking Shea Stadium concert drew over 55,000 fans – including a young Whoopi Goldberg. The Beatles gave birth to arena – anElaine Johnson, who received the surprise of a lifetime thanks to her mother. WWW.RONHOWARD.COM/BEATLES