In August 1966, hours after the Fabs final ‘proper’ concert at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. This was before 'Sgt Pepper' had even been written, by the way.
Ron Howard will direct and produce a new Beatles documentary, with the full authority of the band themselves. It’s devoted to the years in which they were a functioning, gigging band—broadly 1960 to 1966—and will feature fresh contributions from Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison, as well as archive footage of John Lennon and George Harrison.Some of the footage will come from super-8 reels taken by fans, which are being digitally restored, and from mixing desk recordings of the band playing live. So there will be moments that even the most die-hard of Beatles nuts won’t have seen before. And each segment will seek to put the footage, the music and the mania into the context of the times.Archivists have been working on collecting footage for a couple of years now, having sent out this plea in 2012.
Ron said: “We are going to be able to take the Super 8 footage that we found, that was all shot silent. We’ll not only be able to digitally repair a lot of that, but we’ve also been finding the original recordings. We can now sync it up and create a concert experience so immersive and so engaging, I believe you’re going to actually feel like you’re somewhere in the Sixties, seeing what it was like to be there, feeling it and hearing it. And as a film director, that’s a fantastic challenge.”
A Tuesday night in Washington, 1964, a couple of days after The Beatles were ‘introduced’ to America courtesy of their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. I can’t sum up their first proper gig there better than YouTube commenter Jack Sprat, so I’ll hand over to him: “No monitor, dead mics, no smoke, no set, no back-up singers, turning Ringo (on a flimsy stand) around to face the other half of the audience by hand, no PA or soundboard, using the same instruments throughout the show, figuring out onstage how to deal with the situation without missing a beat. It's raw, it's real, but it cuts through the crap - that's Rock n Roll!”
Jack forgot to mention that fans were also pelting the band with jelly babies all the time too, after Macca said he liked them in an interview which ran the day before. Here’s George talking about that: “That night, we were absolutely pelted by the fuckin' things. They don't have soft jelly babies there; they have hard jelly beans. To make matters worse, we were on a circular stage, so they hit us from all sides. Imagine waves of rock-hard little bullets raining down on your from the sky. It's a bit dangerous, you know, 'cause if a jelly bean, travelling about 50 miles an hour through the air, hits you in the eye, you're finished. You're blind aren't you? We've never liked people throwing stuff like that. We don't mind them throwing streamers, but jelly beans are a bit dangerous, you see! Every now and again, one would hit a string on my guitar and plonk off a bad note as I was trying to play.” (The Beatles Off The Record, Keith Badman)
THE CHAOS OF SHEA STADIUM
As best evidenced by this short video of John Lennon clearly not giving a flying fuck:
…and this excellent, long forgotten film by Ed Sullivan to document what, at that time, was the greatest grossing show in the history of showbusiness. “It was pretty wild,” Lennon said later, correctly. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, both in attendance at Shea that night, must have literally seen their future light up in front of their eyes.
Read more at http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/ron-howard-is-making-a-film-about-the-beatles-live-heres-what-he-needs-to-include-in-it#W6oV26fUDMPm0PcE.99
