There have been a lot of tributes and documentaries about the historic band The Beatles. After all, if you know one thing or two about rock music you are aware that the four boys from Liverpool changed the music industry forever. Nonetheless, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years is a documentary directed by Oscar Winner Ron Howard, focused specifically on all the live shows that The Beatles ever did from 1963 to 1965 when they stopped performing live altogether.
It had been a crazy couple of years for that new small British band consisting of four almost-teenage boys. They had started with covers of other musicians' songs and then suddenly they recorder their first No.1 single: Love Me Do. Out of the blue, they were on the map and everything would go up from here. And, truthfully, nothing would happen the way it did, had they not visited the USA where the beatlemania took tremendous proportions. Everyone was crazy about The Beatles. People would wait for them under their hotel windows, they would scream wherever they were seen and of course only one word could characterize what would happen during their gigs: pandemonium. That is what we see in Ron Howard's documentary. From their first appearance until their last in Shea Stadium on August 15th, 1965, we get introduced to the amazing reception that the whole world had in store for John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Watching this movie, one comes to the realisation that what John, Paul, George and Ringo were meant to do was write and record music. You soon understand that the craziness which would welcome them wherever they went, in combination with the awful conditions in which they were forced to play - they were the first band that would play stadium gigs and the technology available didn't allow them even to listen to each other when they were on stage- was too much for them. After all, they had grown up in an age when playing in stadiums wasn't even a dream. Their influences were people who would compose and record, not perform in front of thousands of people. And that's why they stopped performing after their Shea Stadium live. Their only other appearance after that would be the legendary rooftop concert 3 years later, when they had finally matured as artists and grown up to accept who they were, presenting songs which had little to do with their first rock 'n' roll sensations.
But of course, this is not new information for a true Beatles fan such as myself. Having read about this band - which happens to be one of my most favourites- I knew all about beetlemania and their Singles' places in the charts. However this doesn't mean that Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years is not a quite informative documentary featuring great audio and especially video footage from the 60's.
Also, it is always nice to see footage of legends of the past, as it makes them more accessible and real. One seems to forget how funny those Liverpool boys were, or how much they played with words or with each other while they were giving interviews and participating in press conferences. It is always great to see artists work on their music - and that is something that The Beatles did: they did not use other musicians to record in their place- and realise that tracks which seem classic now, once were yet unwritten.
The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years is most certainly a must-see not only for The Beatles fans but for music enthusiasts everywhere. It was shown on Thursday 29th of September and it was followed by an exclusive 30-minute video of the Shea Stadium gig in 1965, with fully remastered audio and 4K image.
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