FILM REVIEW: The Beatles: Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years

BEATLEMANIA swept the nation once again last week when a new documentary film about the Fab Four’s life on the road was released.

Directed by Ron Howard of Happy Days fame, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years, follows the legendary Liverpudlian group from 1962-1966, when they toured the world and earned the adulation of millions of people.

A special one-off screening of the film was held at Cineworld in Sheffield and other outlets across the country with the glitzy Leicester Square red-carpet event being beamed live onto screens.

My fellow Beatlemaniacs and I were treated to interviews with the director, Yoko Ono, George Harrison’s widow Olivia and the two-surviving members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.

The film features unseen, restored and remastered performances along with countless archive photographs of John, Paul, Ringo and George.

As many fans know the group quit touring in August 1965 after playing to 55,000 people in New York’s Shea Stadium.

This film chronicles their touring history before that gig and offers insight into why they took the drastic decision to quit the road.

In the opening credits, McCartney says about touring: “By the end, it became quite complicated, but at the beginning things were really simple.”

But this documentary isn’t full of self-pitying, far from it, what was beautiful to see throughout it was the friendship, camaraderie and fun the boys had “in their great little rock n roll band”.

Their quick wit and tomfoolery is hilariously cute and something you don’t see in today’s media-trained musicians.

To see a present day McCartney still getting emotional when he recounts the time Ringo first played with them, describing it as the ‘oh my god moment’, shows the bond the four shared and is enough to melt the toughest of hearts.

Viewers are plonked right in the thick of the fan and media mania surrounding the group which becomes claustrophobic, frenzied and scary at times.

I also discovered fascinating new facts about the group, like how they were pivotal in the civil rights movements after refusing to play to a segregated audience in Jacksonville, Florida in 1964.

It is quite unbelievable to see how much they crammed into those years — just watching it was exhausting.

Cinemagoers were also treated to a remastered 30-minute performance of the Shea show after the credits rolled.

The film is now available on streaming service Hulu, and I am sure will be in the shops in time for Christmas.

A beautifully-crafted masterpiece that captures history in the making that’ll never be repeated.

 

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