As we’re reminded in the opening sequence in the fascinating and superbly produced Disney+ documentary “Beatles ’64,” the Fab Four arrived on these shores less than three months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, at a time when the country was in dire need of something uplifting, something marvelously diverting, something wonderfully new, something that would excite young America and infuriate the older generation. Ladies and gentlemen: The Beatles!
Directed by David Tedeschi and produced by a team including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Martin Scorsese, “Beatles ’64” could have been subtitled, “Everything Old Is New Again.” Legendary documentarians David and Albert Maysles had incredible, fly-on-the-wall access to the Beatles during their two-week visit to the United States, and much of this footage was seen in their 1964 documentary “What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A.” and has been repurposed for various specials over the years — but we’re also treated to some previously unseen footage. Even the familiar material looks and sounds astonishingly crisp, thanks to the restoration work by Peter Jackson’s Wingnut Studios.
At times “Beatles ‘64” plays like a prequel to “A Hard Day’s Night” (which would commence filming a month after the band’s trip to America), as we see black-and-white footage of the mobs of fans, mostly teenage girls, gathered outside the Plaza Hotel in New York City; the lads making their escape while groupies and press swarmed their vehicles, and hijinks on a train car, where George Harrison dons a porter’s uniform and carries a tray of 7-Up cans while mugging for the camera. (In another precursor to today’s Product Placement Culture, we see John listening to “Please Please Me” on a transistor radio emblazoned with a Pepsi logo.)
Smoking cigarettes, sporting those famous mop-top hairdos and forever joking about, the boys look impossibly young and come across as amused albeit a little taken aback by the swift and enormous scope of their popularity. They deflect insulting, shouted questions from mainstream reporters at press conferences (at one point we hear someone from the press shout, “There’s some doubt that you can sing!”) while refusing to take themselves too seriously. When a journalist asks Paul McCartney about the Beatles’ influence on Western culture, he responds, “You must be kidding. … It’s not culture.”
In present day, separate appearances, McCartney and Starr reflect on that first visit and tell stories from their early days. At an exhibit of his early photos at the Brooklyn Museum, McCartney recalls how he and John Lennon played the newly written “She Loves You” for his father, who said, “Boys, it’s very nice, but couldn’t you sing ‘She loves you, yes, yes, yes’?” The doc also includes interviews with superfans who still love the Beatles all these decades later, and insights from the late Ronnie Spector, who recalls taking the Beatles to Spanish Harlem and Sherman’s BBQ at 151st and Amsterdam, an experience they loved because nobody recognized them.
Still, “Beatles ‘64” is at its most riveting when we’re back in time to those incredible 14 days when the Beatles made their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” took a train to Washington, D.C., to play a concert and flew down to Miami Beach for a second “Ed Sullivan” gig. There’s an incredible moment when we see mounted police accompany their car as they arrive at CBS in New York for a sound check, and some terrifically unvarnished moments, as when the lads party it up at the Peppermint Lounge in a swingin’ go-go scene. (“I’m afraid I don’t know this young lady’s name yet,” Ringo confides to the cameras about one particularly attentive fan.) The Beatles were famous and were already beginning to feel isolated from normal life, but they were still so young, so unfiltered — and unbothered by the steady presence of a camera crew recording them day and night.
The remastered footage also allows us to hear the Beatles performing live without them being nearly drowned out by the screams of their worshipful fans. With Ringo looking for all the world like a live-action version of a cartoon Ringo, bopping his head along while providing the beat, John, Paul and George trade vocals and sing harmonies on songs such as “Please Please Me” and “This Boy.” The sound is pure pop heaven, and their faces radiate shining joy.
In rapid fashion, life for the Beatles would explode on a magnitude and with a complexity they couldn’t have possibly imagined, but in the late winter of 1964, it seems as if they were enjoying the ride as much all those adoring fans.