BEFORE: It's finally here, it's finally here - the day I've been planning for months is here! It's the start of my big Summer 2018 Rock Music chain, which should get me through the dog days of summer and also distract me from the fact that I'm not traveling to San Diego for Comic-Con this week. But let me stop thinking about that, and focus on the fact that I'm about to witness perhaps the greatest line-up of musical acts that ever played the same venue (umm, my widescreen TV, that is...) I'm talking the Beatles, the Stones, Elvis Presley, David Bowie, the Grateful Dead, the Doors, the Eagles, Chicago, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, the Beach Boys, Michael Jackson, James Brown, Joe Cocker, Whitney Houston, Lady Gaga, Amy Winehouse, and then I'll wrap things up with the metal bands like Black Sabbath, Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister, and Rush, in some order. Plus there will be many surprise guests like Alice Cooper and Frank Zappa...
I'm sorry, but the tickets are very exclusive for this event - in fact, there's really just one V.I.P. seat, but you can always follow along at home.
Let's lay down a few documentary ground rules: First, there are only two kinds of films allowed in this chain, either straight documentaries (interviews and such) like tonight's opening act, and also notable concert films. NO dramatic re-creations or biopics allowed, like the upcoming film "Bohemian Rhapsody" film with Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury - it looks great, but it's automatically outside the scope of this chain. And no "Mockumentaries" allowed either - for a while I had "The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch" in this chain, because it allowed me to link between the Stones and Bowie, but I found another way. I'm fairly sure I watched that film before, and it's not great. So bye-bye.
Secondly, I'm limited to what documentaries have been made, and which are accessible to me. I'd love to include everyone from Abba to ZZ Top, but if nobody ever made a film about a certain band, then that can't be part of the line-up. And if there is a documentary about Billy Joel or Pink Floyd, but it's not on any of the streaming services or I'm not aware of it, well, then, that doesn't do me much good, does it? So really, this is a chain dedicated to documentaries that I've heard of, which are either already in my possession, or readily available on Netflix or iTunes. In some cases I've been aware of these docs for YEARS, and just never found the time or made the effort to track them down.
Linking remains in place from film to film - the order here was specifically designed to allow key musicians (or interview subjects) to carry over instead of actors. However, an actor - Sigourney Weaver - carries over from "Holes" to this first film, and an actor who narrates the final film will carry over to get me back to narrative films. Any films that don't link to other films, like a short documentary about Queen that's currently airing on cable, is also being dismissed from the line-up.
Also, an appearance in archive footage counts the same as an appearance or interview specifically recorded for the documentary. This is for the purposes of totaling up all appearances at the end of the year. So it's not uncommon for, say, Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump to make my year-end list, because their 3 appearances, even in news or archive footage, still qualify them. If 17 of these documentaries feature file footage of Paul McCartney, then those will be added to films like tonight's, where he was interviewed on camera, and to any acting appearances, such as his cameo in that pirate movie earlier this year. Same goes for Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, etc.
Today just happens to be the 50th Anniversary of the film "Yellow Submarine" - I realize the Beatles themselves didn't have much to do with the production of that film, but that still makes this a great day to dig into their history.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "George Harrison: Living in the Material World" (Movie #1,516)
THE PLOT: A compilation of found footage featuring music, interviews an stories of The Beatles' 250 concerts from 1963 to 1966.
AFTER: It makes sense for me to start here - and not just because of the Sigourney Weaver lead-in. What greater watershed moment in music history is there than the advent of the Beatles, the way they came to America and changed rock and roll forever? I mean, I know there was Elvis before them, and Buddy Holly and all that rock and roll in the 1950's, but things were never the same again after they hit big in 1963. (I'll backtrack and get to Elvis in a couple weeks...) And they only toured for three or four years before they devoted themselves to studio work, of course by then they were rich as kings, so why keep going out on tour?
Personally, the first pop music I ever knew was the Beatles - my mother had a big songbook for piano with all their best hits (the unplayable ones, like "Revolution No. 9" were conveniently omitted) and I would sit at the piano for hours trying to play simplified versions of their songs. Then in college I really got into their music, as everyone does in college I'll bet, and then spent time trying to play their songs on guitar. And quite probably the first documentary I ever saw was "The Compleat Beatles" - I never thought to question whether the Brits all spell "complete" wrong, or if this was to match the "eat" spelling of "Beatles". That documentary sort of put a big whitewash on things, like probably not much mention of drugs, divorces, and all the groupie sex that the Beatles had in the 1960's. Compleat? Hardly.
But after that documentary (and so many others about the Beatles), is there anything left for anyone to learn about them? I've read several books about the workings of the band also, so there's not much I'm still curious about, unless it involves finding out that there are still things I can learn about them. That's probably the trick for any documentary, though - take something that people know and put some spin on it so they can view it in a new light. The angle here is to focus on their tours, from live performances at the Cavern Club to the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, and then their tours of America, Europe, Australia even, right up to Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1966. (The end credits show their last performance on that London rooftop, for completion's sake.)
Now, I'd been led to believe that the main reason for the Beatles putting an end to touring in 1966 was that their songs had become more complex, and impossible to perform live, at least with the technology and instruments of the time - this was before there were keyboards that could mimic string sections and trumpet solos, and they couldn't exactly travel with a full orchestra either. But the way this film was edited (and if you think about it, a documentary like this is mostly edited, not directed...) I now believe the reverse was true, that the Beatles' music got more complicated (Sgt. Pepper, The White Album) precisely BECAUSE they stopped touring, and had more time to develop their craft in the studio.
I conclude this because the film shows all of the problems inherent with their live concerts - like at the famous Shea Stadium concert, where the Beatles could hardly hear themselves play over the sound of the crowd. And whatever they could hear of their own performance was filtered through giant amps and a terrible sound-system - baseball stadiums were not exactly known for their hi-fi P.A. systems at the time. Then on top of that, there were ALWAYS a few people trying to bust out of their seats and run to the stage (apparently) and in some venues, there were HUNDREDS of people trying to storm the stage. Plus bomb threats in places like Memphis, reactions to Lennon's comments about being "bigger than Jesus" made them fear for their lives. Whether people loved or hated the Beatles, either way they were trying to tear them to pieces. So it's no wonder they stopped touring.
They landed in America full of pep and cheeky comments, and three years later, all the excitement of playing for the fans was probably gone. All this probably would have put a strain on any band, I guess that's the price for such success, but I wonder if it was worth it.
What else DID I learn tonight? First off, that "Hippy Hippy Shake" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" are the same exact song, except for the lyrics. The backbeat, the guitars - identical. Listen to them both back-to-back if you don't believe me. I'm guessing that the Beatles came up with the second one in the early years so they wouldn't have to write another new song.
I also got some insight about why the band struck such a chord with teen girls in 1963, and it's got a lot to do with pronouns. Look at the song titles from their early U.S. hits - "Please Please ME", "From ME to YOU", "I Saw HER Standing There", "Love ME Do', "SHE Loves YOU" - they all imply a level of familiarity, enough to use personal pronouns and suggest that the Beatles were talking about the audience, or people that the listeners knew. Well, of course the girls would swoon over them, there's Paul McCartney asking the girls to please please HIM, and saying that he wants to hold YOUR hand, and they're practically on a first-name basis if they're using non-specific pronouns!
I didn't know about Larry Kane, he's a reporter that traveled with the Beatles to every stop on their 1964 and 1965 U.S. tours. I bet he saw a lot - including the fact that by 1965, the Fab Four stayed fab with the help of a lot of pot. (Considering how much speed they took while performing in Hamburg, pot was probably a relaxing change of pace for them...)
I didn't know that the Beatles played a role in integrating America, either - the Gator Bowl in Florida was a segregated arena, as one might expect in the South of the 1960's, but the Beatles wouldn't play there unless their concerts were integrated. Hey, sometimes that's how progress happens, with boycotts or a similar form of financial blackmail.
The filmmakers were really smart in their song selection here, even though we've all heard the Beatles' songs so many times that they hardly even register any more - or is that just me? But even when the band only had one or two albums to their name, there wasn't much repetition in the performances that were chosen for this documentary. The audience would probably get sick of any Beatles song if we heard it too many times, or even once per continent they toured. But maybe the difficulty of touring so much could have been better emphasized if we kept hearing the same songs over and over again, like the Beatles probably did. Most fans only got to hear each Beatles song played once in concert, but pity the Beatles themselves, they had to hear those songs every frickin' night for three years.
I was lucky enough to see McCartney in concert twice, both times at Giants Stadium in N.J. during my college years - he toured in support of the albums "Flowers in the Dirt" and "Off the Ground". Both were great shows, and I think together they were the first times he'd played some of the more famous Beatles songs live since the 1960's. Also I got to see Ringo in concert once, with his All-Starr Band. Not the first tour, though, which featured Clarence Clemons, Joe Walsh, Dr. John and Nils Lofgren - or the second tour with Burton Cummings, Timothy B. Schmit, etc. No, I saw the band's third line-up, with John Entwhistle, Mark Farner, Randy Bachman, Mark Rivera and Felix Cavaliere. Seems about right. Still, it was a fun show.
Also starring Paul McCartney (last seen in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"), Ringo Starr (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Elvis Costello, Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "The Muppets"), Eddie Izzard (last heard in "The Lego Batman Movie"), Richard Lester, Richard Curtis, Larry Kane, Malcolm Gladwell, Jon Savage, Kitty Oliver, Howard Goodall, Ed Freeman, with archive footage of John Lennon (last seen in "National Lampoon: Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead"), George Harrison (last seen in "Pawn Sacrifice"), Ed Sullivan (last seen in "The Patsy"), Brian Epstein, George Martin, Billy Preston, Neil Aspinall, Muhammad Ali, Derek Taylor.
RATING: 7 out of 10 press conferences
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