Do you want to know a secret? This new Beatles film is FAB! BRIAN VINER gives an exclusive first look at Ron Howard's Eight Days A Week 

By Brian Viner for the Daily Mail

Published: 19:41 EST, 11 August 2016 | Updated: 03:56 EST, 12 August 2016

The Beatles: Eight Days A Week — The Touring Years 


Rating:

On Tuesday evening I went to see the inaugural screening of Ron Howard’s documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week — The Touring Years. Howard was there, and introduced his film by saying that he approached the project with the mantra, and I paraphrase very slightly: ‘Don’t muck it up!’

Everyone knew what he meant. ‘National treasure’ might have become a hackneyed phrase, but there are very few international treasures.

That’s what The Beatles were, still are, and a film-maker telling their story has a duty to protect as well as project it.

BRIAN VINER: On Tuesday evening I went to see the inaugural screening of Ron Howard’s documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week — The Touring Years

BRIAN VINER: On Tuesday evening I went to see the inaugural screening of Ron Howard’s documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week — The Touring Years

Practice makes perfect: The band at Abbey Road Studios in London, January 1967

Practice makes perfect: The band at Abbey Road Studios in London, January 1967

Liverpool 1962: Even as a fan, whose Merseyside childhood had a Beatles soundtrack, there is plenty of material here that I had never heard or seen before

Liverpool 1962: Even as a fan, whose Merseyside childhood had a Beatles soundtrack, there is plenty of material here that I had never heard or seen before

Howard has done just that. With the help of some obvious talking heads (Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr), and some less predictable ones (actresses Sigourney Weaver and Whoopi Goldberg, both of whom, as wide-eyed girls, went to Beatles concerts), he tells a familiar tale with a surprising and at times thrilling amount of originality.

Even as a fan, whose Merseyside childhood had a Beatles soundtrack, there is plenty of material here that I had never heard or seen before. I thought I’d watched every clip, cherished every quip.

But Howard has found some marvellous footage in private archives, and woven it together meticulously. 

Biggest band around: A film-maker telling their story has a duty to protect and project it

Biggest band around: A film-maker telling their story has a duty to protect and project it

Rocking out: The Beatles performing at Shea Stadium which features in a new documentary

Rocking out: The Beatles performing at Shea Stadium which features in a new documentary

The story of how Beatlemania first energised them on those endless tours but eventually sucked them dry, has been told before. I feel like I know the faces of some of those screaming girls at the ABC cinema, Manchester, as well as I do those of John and Paul.

Nonetheless, Eight Days A Week is a perfect title.

It conveys how relentlessly they had to be on duty as The Beatles, especially from 1962 to 1966, when they resolved never to go on the road again.

Backstage at the Opera House in Blackpool in 1964: The story of how Beatlemania first energised them on those endless tours but eventually sucked them dry, has been told before

Backstage at the Opera House in Blackpool in 1964: The story of how Beatlemania first energised them on those endless tours but eventually sucked them dry, has been told before

Touring the USA: The film is unashamedly tailored for an American audience

Touring the USA: The film is unashamedly tailored for an American audience

I feel like I know the faces of some of those screaming girls at the ABC cinema, Manchester, as well as I do those of John and Paul - but this documentary offers something new

I feel like I know the faces of some of those screaming girls at the ABC cinema, Manchester, as well as I do those of John and Paul - but this documentary offers something new

That was after playing to 56,000 at New York’s Shea Stadium, including the devoted Whoopi Goldberg, who had been taken as a surprise by her mother, and recalls the sudden realisation of where they were going making her head ‘explode’.

The film is unashamedly tailored for an American audience. Howard tries to set the touring years in a socio-political frame, which for him is an exclusively U.S. context: Kennedy’s assassination, civil rights, Vietnam. This doesn’t entirely work, but it’s a small price to pay for a lot of pure pleasure.

  • The film opens here on September 15
Eight Days A Week is a perfect title. It conveys how relentlessly they had to be on duty as The Beatles, especially from 1962 to 1966, when they resolved never to go on the road again

Eight Days A Week is a perfect title. It conveys how relentlessly they had to be on duty as The Beatles, especially from 1962 to 1966, when they resolved never to go on the road again