There has been no shortage of documentaries about The Beatles, not to mention the various biopics and even fully fictional works associated with them. I wouldn’t think any more such works were warranted, but yet they keep cranking them out, and I keep watching them. I wouldn’t think it was possible to provide any insights or revelations not previously disclosed, or to even say anything said previously but in a new way.
I also wouldn’t have thought Ron Howard would be the right person to do yet another documentary. And yet, in 2016 he brought us Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years. I have nothing against Howard. He is a decent, through rather workmanlike, director. He seems like a nice enough guy, and I like how he does some unexpected projects like narrating Arrested Development.
What he does correctly in this documentary isn’t necessarily anything new, but that he does it concisely. Whereas Peter Jackson took nearly eight hours in Get Back to relate the story of the group making one album, Howard hits many relevant points of the most productive four years of their existence in less than two hours.
First, he flies through the period leading up to 1962 in the first eleven minutes. Roughly the last half hour will cover the years 1967 and after, when they stopped touring and became focused on maximizing the potential of the studio. Footage of their last live performance, on the roof of their Apple label headquarters in 1969, rolls under the end credits.
In the core years of 1962 to 1966, producer George Martin and manager Brian Epstein decided the band would release a single every three months and an album every six. Output gradually diminished to eventually fall short of that quota, yet they also made two feature films in that time. And, oh yes, they also performed roughly 250 times.
On their first US tour alone, they played 25 cities in 30 days. Nobody had anticipated such a massive turnout for their shows, and rock concerts back then were far more primitive affairs than what they would quickly become. At one New York show, where they are on a stage in the middle of an audience, Ringo is left to turn his rotating drum riser by himself until John yells at one of the roadies to help out. One would think there would be a roadie already there, but they only had two of them—for the entire tour. It is like something out of Spinal Tap.
What is astounding from an historical perspective is how everybody thought this band would be a flash in the pan. Richard Lester, when hired to direct A Hard Day’s Night, was told by the studio, “You ought to be able to make a good, quick, low-budget film with them as long as it’s in the cinemas by July, because we think they’ll be a spent force by the end of the summer.” Larry Kane, a journalist hired to report from the tour busses and planes, says, “The biggest question in 1964 was when the bubble was going to burst.” It is perspectives like this which make this better than the typical Beatles doc, as it makes us feel like we are there in that moment when the future was far from certain.
Something I am embarrassed to say I failed to notice in previous docs is how the talking heads in those were overwhelmingly Caucasian. Here, we finally have Black people invited to the table, with Whoopi Goldberg talking about her fandom and Dr. Kitty Oliver talking about the impact the band’s tour had on the civil rights movement. You see, The Beatles had in their contracts a clause stating they had the right to not perform in segregated venues.
Goldberg provides some fascinating insights from a perspective I had not considered previously. As a Black child, her friends were suspicious of her liking The Beatles. “I felt like I could be friends with them. And I’m Black! I never thought of them as white guys. They were colorless. And they were fucking amazing.” She also grew up poor, yet we learn in a poignant anecdote her mother somehow managing to get tickets for them to the Shea Stadium Show.
That touring eventually took its toll on the group, and it wasn’t just the number of shows or all the travelling. What seemed most dispiriting is the screaming of the fans drowned out even the custom amps Vox built just for them. Elvis Costello marvels how they could have performed in sync and in tune since, without monitors, they wouldn’t have been able to hear themselves or each other. Ringo reveals he could only follow where they were in a song by watching the body language of the others, and he would have been watching them from behind.
I was amazed by the disparate elements of this hectic period Howard manages to touch on in such a relatively brief time. Some of these include the “bigger than Jesus” controversy, the Sullivan show, becoming Members of the British Empire, and the infamous “butcher” cover for Yesterday and Today which was pulled from circulation. And yet he even manages to find room for such bizarre moments as Arsenal football fans in the stands all singing “She Loves You”. Also, I was very surprised to see a snippet of footage of a teenage Sigourney Weaver in the audience of the Hollywood Bowl show. She looks exactly like how you image a young Sigourney Weaver would look.
I’m not sure if Eight Days a Week is the best documentary I have seen about the world’s most famous group, but it just might be the one I would recommend to those who wonder what the big deal was, and why they are so influential to this day. It hits all the necessary points without feeling rushed. It incorporates some perspectives which have been left out of the discussion previously. Mostly importantly, it isn’t eight fucking hours long.
Dir: Ron Howard
Documentary
Watched on blu-ray