BEFORE: The real reason to keep going back to these moments in time is that we need to learn from them, right? Whatever we can take away from re-watching the events from 1963-1964, after John F. Kennedy was killed by the military-industrial complex for botching the invasion of Cuba and the country was in deep sadness, that created the perfect emotional vacuum that Beatles music found a way to fill.
I bring it up because the Ed Sullivan Theater is in the news again, as they've announced the end of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which took over from David Letterman at the Ed Sullivan Theater - the theater itself will probably continue in some fashion, and it's kind of great that a variety show has been broadcast from there consistently for the past 20 years. I watched Dave every night and then just carried over to Colbert, I hate to see things end, but as we've stated here recently, it's hard to get to the top and even harder to stay there. They say the show's ending for financial reasons, but it's just as likely that the corporate entertainment overlords thought that Colbert was too vocal about Trump's incompetence, and as we've also seen here lately, anything like that, written and performed by NYC liberals, ends up alienating half of the TV audience. Plus Paramount has a merger deal pending that needs approval from Washington DC, so, umm, well, you can do the math there.
John F. Kennedy carries over from "What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?"
THE PLOT: Captures the band's electrifying 1964 U.S. debut amid fan frenzy. With rare behind-the-scenes footage, it chronicles their unprecedented rise to global superstardom after performing on The Ed Sullivan Show to over 73 million viewers.
AFTER: Well, this is footage of the historical event that inspired ALL those other bands, from CCR to BS&T and hundreds of others. So I kind of had to go there, even though I've seen the Ed Sullivan footage probably hundreds of times, if not thousands. It's lost all impact for me, I don't really get anything out of watching the Beatles perform any more, for the same reason I can't really watch "Star Wars" movies any more, I've just seen it too often. But at least here it's mixed in with other stuff, not only live interviews with people who remember watching the Ed Sullivan broadcast, and what effect it had on them, but also footage of teen girls THEN, in 1964 they'd basically camped out by the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan and just were not going anywhere, which created a problem, like how do we get the Beatles out of the hotel and across town to the Ed Sullivan show? Also, how do we get all the celebrities that the Fab Four wants to meet up to their rooms. They seemed to be particularly interested in meeting the Ronettes, that's for sure. Well, it would really have been a sausage party without a few birds, if you know what I mean.
Really, they came to America to meet girls, that's my theory. It was a long con, sure, and they each probably slept with hundreds of women over time, but they knew the resources we had in America - thousands and thousands of horny teen girls. You just had to get on TV and "shake it up baby" and then those girls would stand outside your hotel or try to break in and get up to your room because they desperately wanted to have sex with you. The number of girls (now women) who hit instant puberty after seeing the Fab Four on TV - or who had erotic dreams about them, even if they didn't really understand them, is staggering. All four Beatles eventually married American women, just think about that. But it was a process, sorting through them all to find the right ones, and it began with their trip to NYC.
The Maysles were a couple of documentary filmmakers, and they were granted access to the Beatles so they could film them when they weren't performing, they seemed to like hanging out in the hotel suite and getting phone calls from the record company in the U.K. so they could discuss how the tour was going. This is also when Murray "The K", a notoriously annoying NYC disc jockey, started talking to them and immediately asking if they could record station IDs for 1010 WINS, even though the station hadn't yet received their copies of the Beatles records - but could they still record some intros for songs by other artists? Give me a break...
The healing of the nation with Beatles songs also had an unintended consequence of creating an entire generation of entitled teen girls - future Karens, if you will. Suddenly they all felt like THEY should be allowed to talk to the Beatles, touch the Beatles, deliver a petition to the Beatles, and they didn't care about hotel security or the thousands of other girls who were there to do the same, they all believed they would be the chosen ones. If you're looking for Ground Zero on where spoiled teen girl phenomenon started, this could be it. The documentary filmmakers seemed to delight in letting some of these girls think they could slip them in to the hotel, just so they could film these girls inside the hotel when security caught up with them and then had to throw them out. That's not cool, guys.
Thinking about the four lads, you might wonder how people who were so close, who spent so much time together, on stage and traveling around, could get to a place where they couldn't be in the same room with each other, let alone perform together. It's really a question that answers itself, because they did THIS, and lived in hotel rooms and were crammed into cars together and shuffled in the back entrances for gigs, for 6 years straight, that's how they collectively got to that place where they just didn't want to do it any more. Occasionally there was a girl who saw a Beatle, or even touched a Beatle, and then that just wasn't enough, she always wanted more, and that's why we have footage of girls throwing themselves up against the car the band was in, so there was an appalling lack of self-control, and the police were helpless to stop it. Hey, if a girl got run over by the Beatles' car, then they'd HAVE to stop and make sure she was OK, right? And in this direction, madness lies.
What's even worse might be taking that footage from the Maysles and folding it in here, the Maysles had made at least one documentary themselves ("The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit", released in 1991) and if this doc doesn't use the footage from THAT doc directly, then it used the outtakes, which is somehow even worse. Guys, not everything the Beatles did was gold, so there's a lot of random hotel room conversations here that just go nowhere, man. This could have easily been edited down, only nobody seemed to have the time.
OK, no worries, we've still got those testimonials from people who were there, like photographers and music executives, and one guy who flew to the U.K. and then hopped on a tramp steamer to Liverpool, just because he wanted to see where the Beatles grew up and first played. But since he didn't have a travel visa, he was not allowed to leave the boat, not until the Liverpool newspapers found out he was being "held captive", and even then, he was shanghaied back to the U.S. in steerage at the first chance. There's a happy ending of sorts, he grew up to become a record producer and Lennon hired him after he bumped into him and heard his story.
We also hear from Sid Bernstein, the guy who was supposed to have booked the Beatles into Carnegie Hall, but the hall's management nixed the concert when they learned it was rock and roll, not chamber music. Six months later, when the Beatles had really caught on, they apologized to Sid and allowed him to set up another concert with the Rolling Stones. But then they heard the Rolling Stones and invited Sid to never, ever, contact them again. C'est la vie.
Smokey Robinson and Ronald Isley weigh in on how great it was that the Beatles wanted to cover the songs they wrote - I'm guessing they appreciated getting the royalty checks, too. Well, most white musicians like Pat Boone and Elvis Presley were stealing black music without paying for it, at least this was a step in the right direction. The Beatles' cover of "Twist and Shout" from the Isley Brothers and "You Really Got a Hold on Me" from Smokey and the Miracles was a great thing for all involved, and then later on Smokey (and everyone else) would cover songs like "Yesterday" and put their own spins on them.
David Lynch is interviewed here because he attended a Beatles concert in Washington DC, Ronnie Spector is interviewed because she took the Beatles up to Harlem for some BBQ, and nobody there bothered them or even recognized them. Very helpful. And Leonard Bernstein's daughter Jamie talks about breaking her parents' rule about no TV during dinner by stating this was a historic event, OK, she had a point and it's great that she was able to have this open dialogue with her parents instead of just throwing a tantrum. But then later she had erotic dreams about George Harrison kissing her on the cheek to celebrate her getting her first bra, so I wonder if letting her watch the Sullivan show did more harm than good. (There's also footage of Leonard himself saying that he was rather neutral on the Beatles, but perhaps the older people could learn something from the music of the youngsters - then he shows us that there are three beats in each measure of that Beatles song. Umm, yeah, thanks, Lenny. Not helpful.)
Really, the Beatles presented a sharp contrast to American society, if we treat them as a mirror of sorts a lot of people saw in them whatever they wanted to see. Muhammad Ali just wanted to be photographed with them lying down in a boxing ring so he could claim "I just knocked out the Beatles!" when we all know that probably wasn't true. Bob Hope mentioned the old band the Crickets, then the Beatles and just made a bad joke about pest control. Bob Hope got nasty in his old age. And Betty Friedan talked about them as vanguards of a new type of man, not the typical bull-headed strong caveman hunter prevalent in U.S. society, but people with long hair who had a softness, a femininity of sorts to them, and she was all for it. OK, Betty, but if you knew how many teen girls they were sleeping with, you might have changed your tune.
From NYC, the Beatles went to Washington DC, then back up to NYC for the Carnegie Hall gig that got cancelled, and then apparently down to Miami for another Ed Sullivan broadcast. Well, they sure figured out American society quick, all roads lead to Florida, where all aging NY city Jews go to, it's like God's waiting room. They liked Florida because the water was warm and it was mostly sunny, a far cry from Liverpool - and there were girls in bikinis which I'm willing to bet Liverpool didn't have either. The concert at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville was planned for a segregated audience, and the Beatles refused to play there unless the show got integrated. What a stroke of luck, though, that between the booking and the concert, the Civil Rights Act had been passed, and segregating a concert was against the law - I'm not saying that a lot of black people attended, but reportedly a few did, and props to the Beatles for sticking to their principles, Lennon said he'd rather cancel the show than play for a segregated audience.
They also included footage here of Paul and Ringo visiting NYC many years later, I think they both got tours of a Beatles exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, and while this is nice, it's also very very self-indulgent. This film was supposed to be about how regular people were affected by the Ed Sullivan broadcast and the Beatles touring America, we already KNOW how these events affected the Beatles, they got insanely rich and famous and also couldn't stand each other, so they really only stayed on top for 7 or 8 years before they went their separate ways.
What they became, ironically, was the only band in the world that DIDN'T want to be the Beatles. Really, everybody else did and all those bands wanted to take their place, the theory being that all of that attention, all those record sales would go somewhere else after the Beatles stepped down, and well, that sort of happened and sort of didn't, but by the time all that money and attention trickled down to other recipients, though it was kind of filtered and diffused, if that makes sense. That's my take-away, at least.
Directed by David Tedeschi (director of "Personality Crisis: One Night Only")
Also starring Paul McCartney (last seen in "Travelin' Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall"), Ringo Starr (ditto), Danny Bennett, Harry Benson, Jamie Bernstein, Vickie Brenna-Costa, Terence Trent D'Arby, Jack Douglas, Ronald Isley, Murray the “K” Kaufman, David Lynch (last seen in "Lucky"), Joe Queenan, Smokey Robinson (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Martin Scorsese (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Ronnie Spector (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Jane Tompkins
with archive footage of George Harrison (last seen in "Travelin' Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall"), John Lennon (last seen in "If I Leave Here Tomorrow: A Film About Lynyrd Skynyrd"), Muhammad Ali (last seen in "Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes"), Ted Kennedy (ditto), Leonard Bernstein (last seen in "Maestro"), Sid Bernstein, Pat Boone (also last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Elvis Presley (ditto), Ed Sullivan (ditto), Rick Dees, Brian Epstein (last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), Betty Friedan (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Bob Hope (last seen in "Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind"), Tom Snyder (ditto), Jacqueline Kennedy (last seen in "I Am MLK Jr."), Cynthia Lennon, Little Richard (last seen in "Little Richard: Never Too Late"), Yoko Ono (ditto), Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Marshall McLuhan (last seen in "Drunk Stone Brilliant Dead")
RATING: 5 out of 10 cut-up hotel towels allegedly used by Beatles (but, you know, probably not)
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