Josh Reviews Beatles ’64

Beatles ’64 is a new documentary, directed by David Tedeschi and produced by Martin Scorsese.  The film documents the experiences of the four Beatles during their three-week U.S. tour in February 1964, which included their earth-shaking first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.  The film also explores the cultural moment in American society and culture that this visit, and that Ed Sullivan Show appearance, represented.

I’m a huge Beatles fan, and I’m always a sucker for a new Beatles documentary.  I was excited by the involvement of Martin Scorsese in this film, having loved the many music-related documentaries in which Mr. Scorsese has had his hand, including the amazing George Harrison: Living in the Material World documentary from back in 2011.

Unfortunately, I thought this documentary was surprisingly dull.  (For a far more interesting look at this same time-period, I’d direct you to Ron Howard’s 2016 documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week — The Touring Years.)

The best part of the documentary is seeing all of the fly-on-the-wall footage of the Beatles hanging out and joking around.  This video was shot by Albert & David Maysles, and was beautifully restored by Park Road Post Production in New Zealand (who were involved in the incredible restoration process of the footage used in Peter Jackson’s recent, and far superior, Beatles documentary Get Back).  Footage from the Beatles’ Ed Sullivan Show performances was also restored, and the audio from those performances was re-mixed by Giles Martin (the son of Beatles producer George Martin, who has overseen the audio restoration work on many recent Beatles projects), using the “de-mixing” technology created by Peter Jackson’s WingNut Films (that was also used on several recent Beatles album re-releases, such as Revolver and the 1962-1966 collection).

Getting to see and hear better quality versions of those famous Ed Sullivan Show performances is incredible, and a main reason to watch this film.  I wish the filmmakers included longer clips of those performances!

There’s an interesting, albeit somewhat random, array of interview subjects in this film.  There’s some worthwhile stuff here, but it felt to me like the film was wandering from digression to digression without a clear through-line.  It felt like filling time to me.  There are some interesting stories from writers like Joe Queenan, Jane Tompkins, and Jamie Bernstein, but I wasn’t sure why we were hearing from those people in particular.  (Though I did enjoy the clip of Ms. Bernstein’s father, the composer Leonard Bernstein, recommending that parents listen to the Beatles’ music and not be ostriches about it.)

More interesting to me were new interviews with musicians such as Ronnie Spector from The Ronnettes (who talks about being one the Beatles’ few friends in New York on their first visit), Smokey Robinson (who talks about his excitement over the Beatles’ recording his song You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me, and how nice it was to hear the Beatles state publicly that they listened to black music, and loved it), and Ronald Isley of the Isley Brothers (talking about the Beatles’ cover of Twist and Shout).  The late, great director David Lynch pops up for a nice snippet talking about the power of music, and how it’s like fire… but that’s a great example of why this film felt so random and scattershot to me.  What’s David Lynch doing in this film?

The film also pops around to, for example, present a lot of archival interviews with adults trying to understand all the screaming girls.  Those clips were tedious to me.  I’m not sure what the clip of Ringo and Martin Scorsese looking at Ringo’s old outfits has to do with anything, but it was interesting to see.  Also random, but interesting, was a short sequence comparing Little Richard’s original Tutti Frutti with the Pat Boone whitewashed version.  I liked getting to see video of George’s side of a radio interview with the BBC’s Brian Matthew (a familiar voice from the wonderful Live at the BBC double-album from 1994).  But again, the best parts of this documentary for me were the clips from the Maysles’ recordings of the Beatles hanging out in their hotel room and elsewhere, just chatting and goofing off and being silly.  It’s fun to hang with the Beatles in clips like that!

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