The Beatles : Eight Days A Week

Can anyone find anything new to say about The Beatles?  Director Ron Howard has had a crack at it with his latest documentary and makes a decent job of providing some fresh insights into a particular period of their musical career.

Using a mix of contemporary footage, later interviews and modern talking heads he covers the heyday of their live performances and the enormity of the phenomenon known as Beatlemania.  With a brief nod to the early development of the band in Liverpool and Hamburg, the film concentrates on the years between 1962 and '66, from their first number one single until the final live performances.  It's now easy to forget just what a visceral impact they made on popular culture in that short time.

There was the constant cycle of number one singles and albums, but they made most of their money from live performances.  At a time before satellite communications or the internet had taken off the planet seemed a bigger place.  So it's all the more amazing just how much of a world wide sensation The Beatles became in a short period. The sheer size the crowds facing them at airports, on the streets and in venues went from bewildering to challenging to genuinely frightening.  In the end they would retire from live performing in part because their own personal security was becoming an issue.  Their final years were as a purely studio band, and their joy in simply making new music is clear to see.

Along the way they became the first band ever to do a stadium tour, drawing far greater crowds than anyone else could have commanded at that time. They received intense media attention, and one great strength that comes across is their strong bond as a unit.  Decision making was through unanimity and they always spoke as one.  There's also an inherent decency about them, exemplified by their refusal to contemplate playing to racially segregated audiences.

Whilst the contemporary interviews with Paul and Ringo, and some earlier footage of George, offer little that's new, the more interesting comments come from outsiders.  Eddie Izzard on their natural wit and comic timing which endeared to parents as well as teenagers; Elvis Costello on the difficulties of playing to large, hysterically noisy, audiences with the limited technology of the day; and, my personal favourite, Whoopi Goldberg on what it felt like as a young girl to be taken to a Beatles concert as a surprise.

There's a strong reminder of their strong ear for melody, but that lyric writing really only began to take off with Help, a surprisingly strong song when revisited.  And that their live performances had great energy and a sense of adventure, especially once they'd been polished up by Epstein.  There's no attempt to say anything about their private lives away from the band, which leaves much unsaid, but as a means to show us just how huge and intense the Beatlemania experience was this film does an excellent job, even if you're a Beatles fan of many decades.

It's followed by thirty minutes of the Fab Four playing to over fifty thousand people in Shea Stadium, New York.  There's a lot of screaming....