Thread by @batcountry1980

Beatles 64 or: how The Beatles made a lot of American girls scream

I don’t know how it’s happened but like so many cultural institutions Disney now seem to own The Beatles. Or at least they own the TV rights to them. And like everything else Disney get involved in it hasn’t

taken long for things to go downhill. First there was the Get Back documentary which was brilliantly made by Peter Jackson. But, and I mean no disrespect with this, what was great about it came from The Beatles themselves. It was the footage, the existing narrative and of

course, the music that make it what it is. Jackson pieced it together and put it in place, but give 100 Beatles fans that footage and 99 of them will put together something similar to what we got. Fair play to Disney though in releasing a nearly 10 hour docuseries. Next we got

the original Let It Be film. This is one that Disney couldn’t really fail with. Clean up the print and sound, release a film that’s only available on bootleg, everyone is happy. So when Beatles 64 was announced I was looking forward to it but hoping for something with a bit of

originality, a documentary that gave us fresh insight into a moment in time and what it meant. Because, The Beatles have been about for over 60 years now. That’s a huge amount of time in the public domain. Everything has been discussed and dissected. We’ve got the Anthology

documentary that covers their full story. With a title like Beatles 64 my mind went to the excellent book Beatles 66 by Steve Turner which focuses in on one year. That’s the way forward in my opinion, breaking things down, analysing specific years or moments. And this did focus

on one moment, The Beatles first trip to the US. But as for breaking things down it’s an incredibly shallow look at what it all meant, for both The Beatles and America.

The Beatles arrived in America barely three months after the assassination of John F Kennedy, and the idea of

them bringing joy back to a grief stricken nation has become part of their myth. It’s been told many times, but it’s never really been focused on, certainly not in a documentary. And though Beatles 64 starts with footage of Kennedy there’s barely a mention of their impact on a

nation deep in sorrow. It’s not until the last fifteen minutes of the program that Paul mentions it briefly. It could have made for a fascinating documentary that looked at how four lads from Liverpool through both their music and their charming personalities had such a seismic

impact on an entire country. But that would have got in the way of what this documentary is really about. Screaming girls! There is so much footage of girls screaming they should have called it Beatles Fans 64. That’s what it mainly is. Girls screaming, girls asked why they

like them, girls trying to sneak into their hotel. Which is all part of the story, but it just gets boring after a while. Occasionally someone will mention the sexual awakening that was going on when they seen and heard these mop tops, but that’s soon rushed past to get onto more

banal interviews about their hair. They could have focused on the racial tensions of the time, on the segregation that was happening at concerts in America. But, Smokey Robinson mentions it in his interview and it looks like we are about to go down an interesting path and then

we’re back to screaming girls. It’s in 1964 the Beatles refuse to play to a segregated crowd in Jacksonville and have it written in their contract they won’t play unless the crowd is free to mix. None of that is mentioned. Smokey Robinson talks of The Beatles being the first

major act that said proudly they grew up listening to Black music. We see them requesting Black artists on the radio. But this is all skimmed over. No look at the impact this made, of how these four kids had such good hearts, and how that impacted on the youth of the day. The

seed of the Hippy movement, the Love generation, are right there in The Beatles first visit to the USA and they didn’t even know they were doing it. They were just being themselves. It’s all missed out though. There’s nothing about the fact that, as Dylan once remarked on

stage “This is not British music, this is American music” The Beatles, and the British Invasion bands that followed, were selling back to the US something that was already theirs. It was created in America, yet America had fallen out of love with it. There was a handful of

artists that were making a noise. But, the real interesting music that was making its way over the pond was Soul and Spector. That was the contemporary artists The Beatles were into. The guitar music that inspired them had came and went, and it took them to say to America

“you don’t appreciate this? Will we do. We love it” This kickstarted a musical revolution in the US, firing the imaginations of kids all over, who grabbed their guitars and wanted to be like The Beatles. Even Dylan is influenced to go electric further

down the line because of them. None of this is covered, not when there is so much footage of Murray The K to sit through. Or footage we’ve all seen before, mixed with

some new footage that’s always good to see but it’s just shoved in there with a “look at this! It’s new! Who needs purpose when we’ve got the boys laughing at hearing their voices?” Cmon. It’s 2024. Do something interesting with this

premise. It’s not just the footage though. The talking heads and the recent interviews are largely forgettable. When Paul’s first story is how his Dad asked them to change the lyrics of She Loves You to “Yes! Yes! Yes!” or Ringo describing the feeling that New York was pulling

the plane down as they arrived, you know we are not getting anything new and juicy. Though it was fun hearing Paul McCartney swear which was one of the most exciting moments to be honest. There is a great documentary to be made
about the Beatles in 1964. But this isn’t it.