The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years
September. 16,2016The Beatles stormed through Europe's music scene in 1963, and, in 1964, they conquered America. Their groundbreaking world tours changed global youth culture forever and, arguably, invented mass entertainment as we know it today. All the while, the group were composing and recording a series of extraordinarily successful singles and albums. However the relentless pressure of such unprecedented fame, that in 1966 became uncontrollable turmoil, led to the decision to stop touring. In the ensuing years The Beatles were then free to focus on a series of albums that changed the face of recorded music.
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Reviews
The Beatles went from garage band (before garage bands existed) to the world's biggest act, and invented stadium concerts while doing so. But were they any good as a live act?Ron Howard's documentary cobbles together excerpts from most of the surviving sources of live Beatles performances and, accordingly, doesn't contain many surprises for anyone who has followed their story in any great detail. But for younger viewers, who may well be familiar with the music but not necessarily with the hysteria which surrounded it, this film is likely to be something of an eye-opener.In the early stages, as it becomes clear that The Beatles are gaining a following beyond their local fans in Liverpool, they are delighted. When they go to America to be greeted with screaming hysteria on a vast scale, they are pleased, but shell-shocked. And when, less than 4 years later, they finally stop performing to live audiences, they clearly hate the whole thing. This film shows that transition happening.But even now, and even to someone who knows the story inside out, there is something jaw-dropping about the spectacle of seeing the four of them step on stage in front of 56,000 young girls who are delivering sound beyond the volume of a jet engine.The cinema was full. This was personal history for much of the audience, fascinating documentary material for the younger members. The sound and images have been remastered, though much of it still reflects the limitations of 405-line TV and standard 8 home movies etc.The music still works, though, yeah. Yeah yeah.
Made mostly of archival footage... most of it recoloured, this is quite a nice documentary... I was expecting a bit more though. Aside a few bits here and there, there doesn't seem to be that much that's new... even if there is... director Ron Howard says there is. What could be more familiar than The Beatles though? Certainly not an easy story to breathe new life into! All that said, 50 years on from the time, it remains quite incredible to watch the furore that they created, just how new, fresh, raw they were. So disregard my initial thoughts, forget pointless analysis, it's The Beatles! The greatest band the world has ever seen. Just enjoy it and lose yourself if only for a 106 minutes.
When I first heard that the Beatles were going to release a film called The Beatles Live Project I was thrilled. I thought it was going to be a film of some of their greatest concerts like Washington DC, Shea Stadium, Tokyo Japan and others all strung together in remastered High Quality condition. Unfortunately that did not happen. Instead Ron Howard has put together another Beatles documentary movie very similar to The Compleat Beatles which was released in the 1980's, and The Beatles Anthology which was released in the 1990's. There is some live Beatles footage in this film but for the most part it is just interviews with people recalling what it was like to be at a Beatles concert. One of the people who Ron Howard interviews in the movie is Whoopi Goldberg. What on Earth is Whoopi Goldberg doing in a movie about the Beatles? The Beatles were a band who made a career of singing songs about Peace and Love, Whoopi Goldberg is a person who has made a career of preaching hatred, racism, and social division. Thankfully she does not appear in it for very long, but long enough to make any Beatles fan feel a little ill. It's not a bad movie but it could have been better. Ron Howard has made some really good movies but this is definitely not one of them.
EIGHT DAYS A WEEK is perhaps Ron Howard's best film in years, as it's a straightforward documentary feature without any of that sappy stuff that keeps spoiling his feature films. The aim of the documentary is to tell the story of the Beatles, both in their own words and at the height of their fame, using a ton of footage that's been discovered over the years. Thus we get a lot of photographs overlaid with sound taken from recording studios, plus clips of world tours, concerts, and the like.There's not really a narrative of sorts, although the events play out in a chronological order. The running time is added to with the inclusion of interview snippets from some famous fans such as Whoopi Goldberg, while Paul McCartney also gets plenty of screen time. EIGHT DAYS A WEEK has a fast pace and plenty of insight, making it a must-see music documentary, and that comes from somebody who doesn't even consider himself a big Beatles fan.
