Tonight, television obliged me with another film I hadn't seen - The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years. Yet another that's been languishing on my film list for an indeterminate period - also available on Amazon Prime. Mind you, this lockdown will have to go on for quite a while to make a serious dent in that list!
Directed by Ron Howard, this is a documentary film, and shot from the perspective of The Beatles' tours. Which is a great idea, as it focuses our attention on the music, pretty much completely ignoring their personal lives, and all the baggage involved. We get to see their sense of humour, as they start from such a humble base, amazed at what's happening to them - and the juggernaut rapidly grows to such an extent that it's in grave danger of crushing them!
It's fascinating - I'm also following Cilla at the moment, which is a tv miniseries about Cilla Black, who came from Liverpool at around the same time they did, knew them, and had the same manager. And so I had a bit of context, and it was terrific to see them at the beginning of their career, all excited at everything that was happening. As for Beatlemania - whoah. To be fair, the music is very catchy..
And there's plenty of music, which makes this a real fans' film. Towards the end of the film, we see them playing larger and larger venues, which is, of course, why they quit. Imagine, they were the pioneers of stadium concerts - but also imagine what that means, with acoustic problems, crowd control problems, problems simply of hearing themselves and what they were playing, over a wildly shrieking crowd. And no existing solutions to this. As they pointed out, the crowd couldn't hear the music - so what was the point? They didn't want to be a circus version of themselves. It was to be a while yet before others developed the stadium format - in particular U2, who, over the course of a long career, have constantly sought to improve the format of their live shows: always seeking to ensure that everyone in the room has as good a view, and can hear as well, as possible.
Tomorrow sees London Literary Walks' next quiz. Even though, as usual, he's bumped the date to the week after - doubtless so he doesn't have to keep rescheduling a Meetup.
And on Saturday, I'm back with Up in the Cheap Seats for The Midnight Gang Musical, from Chichester Festival Theatre. And hopefully, for the videoconferencing, Jitsi will work - third time lucky..?
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