Beatles – 8 Days a Week – Review of premiere.

Well what can you possibly say or do with the Beatles that hasn’t been said and done?

Their short career has been picked over – not only has the carcass been picked clean but the bones have been boiled for acoustic soup. I’ve heard every scrap from the extensive archives, gleaned from reel to reel in bedrooms to discarded warm-ups between takes. All the live stuff has been incessantly reissued. All the bootlegs have scoured the studio practices, outtakes and private collections. No Stone has been unrolled.

What else can possibly be achieved apart from another lucrative regurgitation of nostalgia in slightly different guise?

The idea of this new film was to tell the story of their live concerts.

To be honest the live material has not been their strongest suit. The quality was poor – produced on crappy sound systems and only featuring their early numbers which were not their best. Most of the time they could not hear themselves, had no monitors and were flying by the seat of their pants. Fortunately the early stuff was quite simple unlike the later material, so they got by. Don’t get me wrong – I love their early numbers. They were excellent – the soundtrack to my youth – but they were superseded by what followed. Apart from a few film snippets from the Cavern there was nothing of their early Hamburg years or formative Liverpool period to draw on – the period of that raw leather-jacketed rocking band. All we had was the same footage of their huge stadia concerts interspersed with some early concert footage from a few British concerts and that spectacular denouement on the rooftop.

We’d heard the interviews, seen the zaniness, seen all the fan reaction and heard the stories. We knew it backwards. The hysteria, Beatlemania, Jesus Christ, Ku Klux Klan, Vietnam, Civil Rights, Assassinations, burning records, threats and disillusionment with touring.

Still we went.

I’m glad we did. The film was excellent. It told the story, interspersed the fans, press, fun, fear, wit, pressure, sadness, unreality and sheer enormity, and did it very well. But that isn’t what made it special. The difference between this and all the other Beatle documentaries was the sound. They had used the latest technology to clean up the film a bit as well, but far more importantly, it managed to bring the sound up to a quality I haven’t heard before. For the first time they (and I mainly mean Giles Martin – George’s son) have used technology to clean up and separate the instruments and vocals from the wall of hysteria and show the driving force behind the band. Instead of the tinny consume of sound we get the full rich broth. For the first time one is able to feel the impact of the live Beatles. It was powerful. It was a power that set them apart from all the other bands. You could see that they had something the others didn’t. At the same time one gets a great feel for the unbelievable deafening noise of the fans and the surreal nature of the Beatles existence. They were in a bubble of pressure, demands, stupidity and creativity that was totally unreal. You could feel the closeness and camaraderie, the cynicism and tensions. The film made it real.

Sadly we had to sit through an hour of celebrity crap as various stars were paraded up the carpet and posed in front of a Beatles poster. They preened, swaggered and posed for sycophantic fans sickeningly.

Ringo summed it up – everyone wants a part of you – a second here and a minute there – it drains your energy.

Once they were Rock ‘n’ Roll rebels in leather jackets – the wild young men parents warned their daughters about – youths out for a wild time who lived for excitement and music (and the music was what mattered) – now they are celebrities invited to the best parties, top functions and hob-nobbing with the aristocracy. You can’t get more establishment!

If you want to hear the story of Rock and rebellion – try my books: