BEFORE: I know it's a Beatles weekend, and I'm just past the halfway point in the Doc Block, but I'm really getting burned out on documentaries. It's just too much, there's only so much a man can take. This is one of those horribly produced hour-long filler docs that ran on the Fuse Music channel or AXS-TV or one of those. I know I'm not going to like it, and more to the point, I'm not going to learn anything from it, which is the whole point. OK, I'm going to watch it, but really just to get rid of it.
By this time next week, I'll be on another topic, with docs about independent animation if my chain holds up. That's kind of a different problem, because I lived in that world for a very long time, it's going to bring up some memories, good and bad. In fact I just got contacted by a company that's releasing one of the films I produced on BluRay, and they asked me to write some liner notes for the included booklet. Sure thing, I can do that, let me just see what I remember from the year 2003 (I do have stories on tap, it turns out). Let me say that as weird as it was to be part of animation production for 30 years, if I had spent even a year of my life working on hastily produced docs about rock music that were unauthorized by their subject matters, I probably would have blown my brains out, either figuratively or literally.
All four Beatles carry over from "Beatles '64".
THE PLOT: Shooting on to the scene in the early 60's, The Beatles took the world by storm - their fame was new, massive and continues to this day.
AFTER: Continuing my thought train from yesterday - there came a time when the Beatles didn't want to be the Beatles any more. They wanted to keep making music, but they didn't want to tour any more and they also couldn't be in the same room without fighting with each other. Torn apart by money, lawsuits, their desires to have relationships outside the band, like everyone else in the countdown this year, they just couldn't stay on top for long, or for some reason they just didn't want to. But what made them unique is that they'd already accomplished everything they set out to do, broken every sales and chart record, so they also didn't need to keep going.
Each generation of fans came to them in their own time - for me I didn't really discover their music until college, as my roommate was a massive fan. Of course I'd heard their songs before, but I hadn't taken a deep dive into their records, not until the roommate was playing them around the clock. But this was 1986, and the Beatles had been dissolved for 16 years and Lennon had been dead for 6. So I never really experienced the break-up or the longing for the band to get back together, it was impossible. The best I could do was to catch up and move forward, so during college I went to two McCartney concerts at Giants Stadium, fortunately this tied in with Paul's desire to finally start doing some of the old Beatles songs again. I mean, yeah, both times he had new albums to promote but he was also playing the old stuff, and that was enough to draw thousands of fans back out to see him live. OK, so maybe some people were there to hear the songs from "Flowers in the Dirt" or "Off the Ground", but let's not kid ourselves, OK?
A few years later, I went to see Ringo with his All-Starr Band when they played New York - OK, so it wasn't the line-up with Clarence Clemons and Nils Lofgren, it was the one with the guy from the Rascals, the bassist from The Who and the lead guy from Grand Funk Railroad, but that's all right, because I just wanted to say I'd seen another Beatle play - so I'm 2 for 4.
I think the worst thing about a doc like this is that it actually presents us with WRONG information some of the time - the so-called music "expert" calls a song written by George Harrison as "Love to You" rather than "Love You To". That's a huge error. He also said that the White Album had "Hey Jude" on it, which is an even larger mistake. It's not there, go and check. It was released as a single (one of the longest ever) with "Revolution" on the B-side, and then they later released an album called "Hey Jude" in 1970, which also had songs like "Rain" and "Paperback Writer" on it, songs that were also singles or B-sides and had never been on LPs before. Didn't anyone CHECK what this guy blurted out?
Nobody's going to learn anything from this doc, either, unless they just landed on the planet or have been in a coma since 1963. Maybe you heard that the Beatles played a rooftop concert in 1969 and it was the last thing they did together before they called it a day. Right after it they said, "Well, that's it lads, let's never get back together and play more music, not even if some producer from a Saturday Night sketch show offers us a million dollars." "Ok, that sounds like a great plan!" But that's not what happened at all, because Ringo played drums on albums for John and George, these guys stayed friends and stayed in touch, they just couldn't work in a studio together for days on end without getting under each other's skin. It's very relatable if you think about it.
They really should have ended this doc with one of those "Animal House" style "Where are They Now?" updates. Paul went on to form a moderately shitty band with one wife, who ended up pushing her vegetarian lifestyle on him, but she died and then he married a woman with one leg who was on "Dancing With the Stars" or something. George got into producing movies, first great movies with the guys from Monty Python and then for some reason a terrible one with Madonna and Sean Penn. There's a whole other documentary about HandMade Films, called "An Accidental Studio" and it's quite fascinating. Ringo married an actress and made some bad decisions, like appearing in the films "Caveman", "200 Motels" and "Lisztomania" but hey, that's love for you. Then he formed those All-Starr bands and kept on touring, so I guess once you're in the life, it's very hard to get out of it.
I'll update you on John Lennon tomorrow - yeah, it's a bummer, I know.
Directed by Matt Salmon
Also starring Sid Griffin (last seen in "Elton John: Becoming Rocketman"), Tony Calder, Jennifer Otter Bickerdike and the voice of John Darvall
with archive footage of Barbara Bach (last seen in "Under the Volcano"), Chuck Berry (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Bob Dylan (ditto), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Pete Best, Brian Epstein (also last seen in "Beatles '64"), Yoko Ono (ditto), Elvis Presley (ditto), Brian Grazer, Edward Heath (last seen in "The Special Relationship"), Ron Howard (last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad"), Michael Jackson (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), George Martin (last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), Linda McCartney (ditto), Roy Orbison (last seen in "Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll"), Billy Preston (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Stuart Sutcliffe, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (last seen in "The Beach Boys")
RATING: 3 out of 10 Hamburg strip clubs
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