Hi, Vicky,
If this is coming out on Hulu, I think I'll be able to watch it.
Rosie
'l
On 9/11/2016 2:37 PM, Vickie wrote:
Blank
'Eight Days a Week' embraces The Beatles as a live sensation Kim Willis , USA TODAY LAS VEGAS To hear Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr tell it, The Beatles
wrote the most beloved songs in rock history to avoid being upstaged by rival cover bands. "The band before you could do your whole act," McCartney says
of the Fab Four's earliest days as live performers. "It wasn't like this great muse came down it was the only way out of this situation. We'd better write
a few because then they can't do them before we go on. The two surviving Beatles are seated chummily, side by side, on an enormous white sectional in a
plush villa at The Mirage to talk about Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years. The documentary (in theaters Sept. 16, on Hulu Sept. 17), directed by Ron
Howard, tracks the group in concert from the beginnings of Beatlemania through their last trek in 1966 using fan-sourced clips and new and archival interviews.
The project follows a narrative arc that asks, "How on earth did they stay sane and stay together through this tidal wave of fame, fortune, glitz and people
yelling at them, and not have their souls expropriated? producer Nigel Sinclair says. Howard's idea was to look at "this moment of this kind of explosion
through the point where it wasn't really sustainable and make an adventure story out of it," says the director, who watched John Lennon, George Harrison,
McCartney and Starr burst into American consciousness in 1964 on The Ed Sullivan Show. Three weeks later, when he turned 10, "I wanted a Beatle wig. And
that's what I wore all around for my birthday. In the film, The Beatles are seen performing sets that play like pantomime, unable to hear themselves over
the deafening shrieks and nearly being crushed by surging fans. "It's about us dealing with the life we had to lead in those days," says Starr, 76. Still,
"we were never full of fear. In Wales, some kid grabbed me by the hair, which in those days was a lot longer, and would not let go. I was a little sore
there for a while. But that was the most that ever happened. The Beatles performing at the Cavern Club in Liverpool on Aug. 22, 1962, days after Ringo
Starr replaced Pete Best as the band's drummer. "I played with three different bands (one night), because two drummers didn't show up," Starr says. "And
I knew the whole act of everybody, because we were all playing the same songs. (Photo: Apple Corps Ltd.) The chaotic 1965 Shea Stadium show, the beginning
of the big-venue rock era, proved both momentous and manic. "We could either be very angry and annoyed in front of 56,000 people or get hysterics, which
is what kicked in," says McCartney, 74. "And so there's John doing his solo on I'm Down," he says, running his elbow up and down an imaginary keyboard:
"'Rrrr, rrrr, rrrr. We're just 'Ha, ha, ha. It just went to hysterics, which was often the safety valve. New to most fans is the revelation that The Beatles
flatly refused to play to a segregated audience in Jacksonville and insisted on integrating the Gator Bowl. "It wasn't the kind of thing we wanted to boast
about, to say, 'Yeah, you know what? We're anti-segregation. We just were," McCartney says. "Are they crazy? You can't go to the gig? It was like a foreign
thought," Starr adds. The boys banter with the press on Feb. 11, 1964, as they travel by train from New York to Washington for their first U.S. concert.
When they went to the British ambassador's house there for a reception, a guest snipped off a piece of Ringo Starr's hair for a souvenir. "We thought it
would be quite a cool crowd, but they weren't cool at all," Paul McCartney says. (Photo: Apple Corps Ltd.) What fascinated Sinclair was how the eventual
decision to quit touring illustrated The Beatles' process as a collective. "If all four of them agreed, that was their universe. They created this center
of power and gravity," he says. "Our aim was to show you that they had to decide to end, the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis" to focus the second
half of The Beatles' career in the studio. But they feel good about those years on the road. "We get in a band, and, you know, the band gets good. It's
just this whole miracle of these four little guys from Liverpool coming together," McCartney marvels. England had just stopped military conscription, "and
we all would have had to go into the Army the next year. "I always think of it like God opening the waters for Moses: 'Well, OK, you don't have to go in
the Army. You can be The Beatles.'
