When The Beatles took on America, it wasn’t so much a crack in pop culture but a fissure in the space-time continuum. A shattering moment for music, it firmly established the Fab Four as global icons, transforming music – and the band themselves – almost overnight. An astonishing moment of alchemy, a hand of live shows and a set on The Ed Sullivan Show sparked a frenzy the likes of which the American public could scarcely imagine – chart records tumbled by the day, with Beatles wigs being found in every corner store from coast to coast.
New documentary Beatles ’64 offers an intimate glimpse inside the band’s camp as this whirlwind unfurled, while also pausing to capture the breathless – funny, revealing, and occasionally poignant – observations of fans on the ground. It’s built around contemporaneous film shot by brothers Albert and David Maysles, expanded into a firm narrative by that time that includes director David Tedeschi, and producers Martin Scorsese and Margaret Bodde.
As it now anticipated from post-Millennial Beatles output, the new film boasts a glittering array of top tier talent. The footage from the Maysles archive was remastered over a three-year period by Peter Jackson’s Park Road team in New Zealand, while the blistering audio was pieced together by Giles Martin, aiming to give a front row seat at a musical revolution.
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CLASH meets David Tedeschi and Margaret Bodde for a quick chat in Central London before the film’s UK premiere, and the two are buzzing with energy at being to tell such a formative story. We open with a flurry of questions – how this came about, their introduction to the original footage – before Margaret Bodde jokingly interrupts with a question of her own; “And how lucky are we…?”
The two have known Martin Scorsese for decades, and worked on multi award-winning George Harrison documentary Living In The Material World. “We remain close friends with Olivia Harrison,” Bodde points out. “We were aware of this footage, but Apple had sent the original material to Peter Jackson for restoration, which I think was a three year process. By the time we were approached, everything had been restored… so a lot of the hard work had been done! We were tasked with finishing this film in under a year – so it could sit in the 60th anniversary year – and the challenge, of course, is how do say something new?”
“It’s an organic process,” David Tedechi affirms. As it transpires, the director worked with the Maysles brothers as a young man, and this sense of reverence added another very personal layer to the story. “They were very young filmmakers,” he explains. “This was their second film. They didn’t spend much time in post-production. The Maysels when they made this – for whatever reason – weren’t interested in the music so much as the Beatles themselves. We’re interested in the music. So that’s one difference. The other is that when we watched the footage, I was struck by the fans. We’d never seen fans like that before!”
The Beatles’ cracking America is just one tremor in the 60s youth-quake, a time when the Baby Boomers up-ended Western life. This sense of youth reverberates through the film – from the ecstasy of the fans, through to the innocence of the band themselves. “They’re so young and they’re so happy… I’ve always thought of them in the later years. But here they are, these young men living out a dream… all their musical heroes were American. And they couldn’t quite believe it.”
“America was considered impregnable,” Tedeschi adds. “No British artist had done it. Rock ‘n’ roll arts had come and hadn’t had much of an impact. And remember George Harrison had been to New York the year before, and I think his report was essentially: they haven’t really heard of us!”
As a baseline, the team behind Beatles ’64 had 11 hours of original footage – it may sound like a lot, but it left holes that needed to be filled.
“There’s a misconception that more footage takes more time. The thing for us, at least, that is most frustrating, is when you don’t have the material to tell the story. Being able to identify what it is, what you’re missing… personally, that’s the hardest thing.”
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Utilising other sources, Beatles ’64 takes care to platform the voices of the fans. The revered American writer Joe Queenan looks back on his abusive upbringing, and recalls the seismic impact The Beatles had on him. “The Beatles saved their lives,” the director insists, “the joy in the music gave them something fundamental.”
The famed engineer Jack Douglas was recruited to recall his life-changing trip to Liverpool – he and a friend literally travelled the Atlantic, going to the source of the Beatles phenomenon. “We met up at Savannah Film Festival,” says Tedeschi. “We took a walk in Savannah. We sat in the park – not unlike Forrest Gump, actually, where you see those beautiful parks, people sitting on those park benches, spinning tales. Jack told me that whole long story about going to Liverpool as a young man. He was 17 years old when he first heard ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ on the radio. That changed him – he wanted to become a musician.”
One key factor in The Beatles trip to America is timing – the nation had lost its President only a few short months before, with the assassination of John F Kennedy representing a huge psychic scar, particularly for the young. “We talked about that a lot,” says Margaret Bodde. “I mean, I think it was a factor. For some people, it was this much-needed healing right after this devastating loss. I mean, Kennedy really spoke to young people.”
“But there’s other people from that same era who said: oh no, that didn’t have anything to do with it. They were great. And that was just what happens when a band is that great, and when they hit a nerve like that… people love them!”
“I think it depends on who you ask,” she muses, “but there’s a number of people – and Paul McCartney himself is one of them – who think this seemed to be something that was a moment of release for Americans.”
A storied event in pop culture, the moment Beatlesmania crossed the Atlantic has been told many times over, often by the band themselves. Yet Beatles ’64 looks and feels different – the work done on restoration is sublime, while the Fab Four’s undeniable electricity leaps off the screen at each performance. “I’d never heard anything like it before,” gasps Tedeschi. “It’s really a document of who they were as a live band in 1964.”
“I love the fans in the film,” Margaret adds.
“Oh they’re wonderful,” the director nods. “It’s a real time-piece.”
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The extraneous footage often contains some real jewels – young Black American men in Harlem, for example, argue that John Coltrane is better, as much as they appreciate the Fab Four’s energy. “It’s shocking how young all these people are,” says Bodde, “but they’re so poised and articulate. And remember people weren’t that comfortable on camera at that time.”
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr maintained a keen interest in the film during its production, with drafts being shared with the remaining Beatles, and the associated estates of John Lennon and George Harrison. It’s “added pressure” says David Tedeschi, with admirable under-statement. “It was also very gratifying. The feedback was always very positive, and that really helped to expedite the process.”
“I mean,” he says with a wry smile, “they seemed to have an understanding of the process!”
The two have been attached to Beatles projects previously, and signing off from our chat seem open to adding another chapter to the Fab Four’s story. “We’re certainly always open,” Bodde says. “We’re not aware of any other kind of treasure trove of footage, but we’re hoping that there is some because we’re endlessly fascinated by every aspect of their career.”
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Beatles ’64 is available to stream on Disney+ now.
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