BEFORE: No shockers here, the four Beatles carry over from "Eight Days a Week" thanks to archive footage, of which I'm sure there is plenty. I mean, have there ever been four people more filmed and/or photographed than the Beatles? OK, perhaps, but nobody leaps to mind right now.
THE PLOT: The history of the Beatles and their cultural influence.
AFTER: It's just like I suspected, there are more famous people shown in this film than are represented in the cast list on the IMDB - meaning that my time spent linking these docs together COULD have been much easier, if only someone in the rights & clearances department had kept better track. As it is I now have to wind my way through pop music history, jumping around in time quite liberally, because in order to know who exactly appears in which films, I would have had to watch them all somehow before watching them, which would have been impossible. In a couple days I'll move on to another subject, so please bear in mind that the order in which I'm tackling these docs has nothing to do with how much I like each band or performer, or how influential they were, the order was chosen specifically to maintain the linking.
Speaking of influence, this documentary is all about it - the historical influence that the Fab Four had on the culture of the 1960's and beyond. The easiest points to make here center around music, since the Beatles invigorated both sales of singles and then albums, they were the first group to have the top 5 selling singles at the same time. Then they released the first psychedelic song ("Tomorrow Never Knows") and the first genuine concept album ("Sgt. Pepper's") and then I think the first group to have two number one albums after breaking up. But I probably need to check that last factoid. But don't forget the entire British invasion line-up - the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Animals, and so on, they were all trying to follow in the Beatles' footsteps, to one degree or another. And of course, it was unusual for any band to have not only two lead singers, but two genius creative songwriters in it. That didn't really come along again until Jagger-Richards, or perhaps the Guess Who if you're Canadian.
Obviously they influenced music, and then fashion came right along with that, but what else? Anyway, the fashion part mostly came from Brian Epstein at first, who put the Beatles in suits so they wouldn't look like punks, and then maybe the parents of 60's teens wouldn't mind so much that their kids were rocking out. But parents hated the Beatles long hair anyway, right? And it wasn't even so long, that's what so weird about it (just wait until 1968 or 1969, parents...) but I guess then that anything besides a crew cut on a dude was considered long hair back then.
Obviously there were movies, too - I think the Beatles were the first musicians to play THEMSELVES, or fictionalized versions of themselves, in a movie. Sure, Elvis Presley had been in many movies, but he always played a race-car driver or a soldier or something. It's weird that he never just played a rock star, right? But I think this is sort of a moot point, because after two movies, the Beatles made confusing films like "Magical Mystery Tour" that were quite terrible.
Last night's doc touched a bit on the Beatles' influence on civil rights, how they forced the desegregation of venues such as the Gator Bowl. I wish they had mentioned that again here, but that seemed to be left out in favor of other matters. Of course we know that the Beatles hit America at what seemed like a very opportune moment, shortly after the Kennedy assassination, and Americans were in a funk and didn't know if they would smile and dance again. Hmm, maybe that's a bit of an over-simplification, but I didn't know that the winter of 1961-62 was such a rough one in the U.K., and so that country was also allegedly in a bit of a funk. I'm not sure that I buy that one either, but I do believe it took a long time for the U.K. to cheer up after World War II, and even longer to clean up all the debris from Nazi bombings.
Tying the success of the Beatles to things like Britain's post-war decline, and even going back as far as the Industrial Revolution, makes for more tenuous connections. I can probably determine that the Beatles were a hit because they were attractive men who wrote good songs and had cheeky personalities, and that's got nothing to do with the sun setting on the British Empire, right? This film succeeds better when it mentions things like Paul's interest in the underground art scene of London. We tend to think of John as the Beatle most closely connected to the counter-culture, but Paul lived on the top floor of a building where there was an underground bookshop on the main level, and he became friends with the shop's owner, popping in late at night to pick up something to read. He also visited a lot of art galleries, and turned Lennon on to underground art - John went to the gallery and wasn't as interested in the art, but he did meet Yoko there.
There's another mention here of religion, Lennon's famous "bigger than Jesus" comment that wasn't taken well by the right-wing Christians in America. His apology, which clarified that he wasn't bragging, just stating a fact, was probably too little, too late for some people. But like it or not, you have to admit that he had a point - I mean, how many gold records did Jesus have? Sure, he had more fans, but he died poor, and the Beatles were rich. And the Beatles never re-united, but Jesus had a heck of a comeback tour after Easter.
Then there's the Beatles' affiliation with the underground, the counter-culture, which manifested itself out in San Francisco, as the beat movement turned into the hippie scene. Paul had admitted in the press to taking LSD, which some people felt he should have kept quiet about, but that was Paul, honest to a fault. John and George got a bit jealous, apparently, since they'd taken LSD too and nobody made any fuss over that. Paul blamed the media for printing the story, and that sort of sounds like a bit of a cop-out, I mean, what else was the reporter going to do, NOT print that fact? So really, the Beatles are responsible for the rise of tabloid journalism, too, because they led lives that were interesting enough to print stories about.
I didn't know about this event that took place at Royal Albert Hall, which was a giant poetry reading, featuring Allen Ginsberg and other members of the counter-culture. I thought of the line from "A Day in the Life" that goes "Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall..." - allegedly this line came from a newspaper article about potholes (4,000 holes in Blackburn-Lancashire) but now I'm wondering if Lennon hated poetry, and this was some kind of reference to a large bunch of (ass)holes turning up at this event held at the Albert Hall.
But the cultural revolution that began with kids buying Beatles records with their own money, dressing differently from their parents and having their own views on love and politics hit a snag when things started to get violent. Teens were starting to protest the Vietnam War, and there were riots for civil rights, and it seemed like the only way to protest injustice was with violence. This is where the Beatles separated themselves from the youth culture, and tried to remain above the fray. After declaring that "All You Need Is Love" (which itself is something of an over-simplification, because yes, people need love, but they also need food, clean water, decent housing, and human rights...) Lennon wrote in "Revolution" that "We'd all love to change the world...but when you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out." In other words, we need to work for peace, but if we use violence to bring about social change, then it's just not worth it. The thought that one needs to become violent to end violence was apparently too much of a contradiction for him.
And that's the thinking that led to the famous "bed-in", and the recording of "Give Peace a Chance". Now, I'm all for peace, and working for peace, but that really is a terrible song. Why couldn't Lennon champion peace by writing better lyrics? Rhyming "Revolution" with "Evolution" is great songwriting, and so is "constitution" with "institution" - heck, I'll even allow rhyming "Chairman Mao" with "anyhow", it's all good. But he lost me with this whole "Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Tagism" thing, and rhyming "Ministers, sinisters, banisters and canisters" is essentially nonsense. He had the whole world looking to him for answers about how to enact social change, and he wrote what is basically a goofy chant with a super-annoying repetitive verse. Lennon really dropped the ball on this one. Still, I'm glad he took reporters to task for breaking the news that a couple spent their honeymoon in bed together.
It's also notable that this is man who just a few years before, while performing for the Queen, had made the request "Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands, the rest of you, just rattle your jewelry?" At the time, this was a cheeky poke at high society from a working-class band. Just four years later, reporters were coming to the Beatles to ask what they thought about Vietnam. But by this time Lennon was apparently tired of breaking down barriers and touring the world, and just wanted to stay at home in Surrey with his new girlfriend/wife.
But musically, they were always pushing the envelope. Several of the experts interviewed here (which include the publisher of Mersey Beat, Village Voice reporter Robert Christgau, and a couple close associates of the Beatles) pointed out that the first time they listened to the Sgt. Pepper album, it was very weird, because it was so unlike all of the albums that had come before. You can probably say that about any album from your favorite band, even if you're used to a group's sound, any time you hear a new collection of work, it might sound weird. Now, of course, everyone's heard "Sgt. Pepper's" hundreds or thousands of times, so we're all used to it and it doesn't seem so weird any more.
This film's budget for Beatles songs was apparently quite limited, so they're few and far-between. That's fine, but I don't approve of playing background music in other parts that seems like a rip-off of the instrumental parts of "Come Together" or "She Said, She Said". That seems a little unfair.
Also starring Tony Bramwell, Robert Christgau, Anthony DeCurtis, John Dunbar, Jonathan Gould, Bill Harry, Chris Ingham, Barry Miles, Mark Paytress, with archive footage of Brian Epstein, George Martin, Richard Lester, (all three carrying over from "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years"), Mick Jagger, Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, Yoko Ono, Jane Asher, Peter Asher, Maureen Starkey, Pattie Boyd, Linda McCartney, Bob Dylan (last seen in "Steve Jobs"), Brian Wilson, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Brian Jones, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Queen Elizabeth II, John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Hidden Figures"), Martin Luther King Jr. (ditto), Jackie Kennedy, Harold Wilson, Robert Kennedy, Richard Nixon (last seen in "Kill the Messenger"), Wilfred Brambell, Freddie Mercury, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Chris Martin, Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, Tré Cool.
RATING: 6 out of 10 Teddy Boys
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