Younger people might scoff, but if you weren’t there when it was happening, you can have no idea of the unprecedented, profound and lasting impact of the Beatles. They were more than just ‘of their time’; they changed their time in a way that has not been repeated by any performing artists since. Ron Howard’s documentary of the Fab Four’s early period of hard and relentless touring covers the years from 1962 until 1966, and includes remastered footage of a performance at Shea Stadium, New York, in 1965 that, for old fans at least, is an absolute knock-out. Interviews and gigs from various locations, many of them in B&W, have been painstakingly compiled in chronological order to give an insight into the energy, creativity and fun the boys were having until, ultimately, the pressures of their own success and the demands of the media and a doting public began to take their toll. In one aside, George (do I really need to say Harrison?) comments that he felt for Elvis, ‘because he was on his own. We’ve at least got each other to cope with it all.’ There is the ebullience and the off-the-cuff wit – ‘I’d like to be a duke,’ Ringo says when asked what more they could achieve, Paul’s fierce ambition, John’s irreverence – ‘We’re bigger than Jesus’, and, above all, there is the astonishing output. There seemed to be no end to the group’s ability to come up with yet another hit song, with only hindsight allowing us to now understand the significance of Lennon’s genuine dismay expressed in the lyrics of Help. Commentaries are provided by, among others, Whoopi Goldberg and Elvis Costello, comedian Eddie Izzard and director Richard Lester, and Sigourney Weaver with, remarkably, a shot of her at one of the concerts – ‘I wore my best dress, because I knew they’d see me’. But it is the tightness of the band, the faultless harmonies, Lennon’s primal voice and Ringo’s banging away on his minimalist drum kit that stick in the mind. A fantastic flick, whether you are a tragic or not.
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