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MOVIE REVIEW: The Beatles: 8 Days a Week

Garth Cremona (RIP)

A look back at the touring years of the Beatles from their time in Munich to when the lure of the road and the big stadiums became too much from them. Ron Howard brings us the archive footage and the stories behind the biggest band in the world.

I grew up in a house in Ireland, I was born in 1975, and The Beatles were pretty much the soundtrack to my childhood. Them along with Elvis and for some strange reason that I’m never going to understand the soundtrack to The Sound of Music. Believe me when I tell you that this was in no way the strangest part of my childhood. But the songs of The Beatles, their earlier work, were ringing through the house for while I was a small boy, I can’t remember what was going through the house when I was a small girl, but that again is for another time. The simplicity of Love Me Do, Help, and I wanna hold your hand, were catchy and easy to pick up and there was an honesty to their lyrics. I knew they had broken up and that someone called Yoko was involved. I also knew that Paul McCartney was still on TV and the Radio singing about No More Lonely Nights and singing with some frogs. Over the years we’ve seen dramas and documentaries about their break up and what went on with that hole situation but what has never been given to us is that inside look into their early career as The Beatles, from when Ringo joined the band, and showed how their love of touring and performing evaporated from them.

Ron Howard pieces together intimate archive footage from when the Fab Four were Fab. But also takes interviews from all The Beatles members filmed after their split which talks about the 8 years from 1962 that they were on the road. We have interviews with celebrities like Sigourney Weaver, Richard Curtis, and Whoopi Goldberg about their love for the boys from Liverpool. There is an extremely touching moment where Whoopi Goldberg talks about how her Mother brought her to see The Beatles at a stadium in America, which really spoke about the impact that these four guys from England who loved their music changed the way we acted towards our fellow humans.

The film is a wonderful insight into when it was wine and roses for the boys and how the fame changed them. It shows four young men having to cope with the fame and fortune that they found, the battles that were fought inside and outside the group and you get the feeling of the wonderful love that they had for one another.

We glimpse at the studio recording sessions they had with George Martin who led them through the difficult schedule of producing a single every three Months and an album every six months. If you were to go to some of the fame hungry performers that we have murdering music today and tell them they had to work as The Beatles worked you’d have a lot of them fainting with just the thought.

This is a must watch for all musicians and anyone even thinking of starting a career in music, it’s about how fame fell upon them and how they worked hard to make it and keep it. An eye-opening resource for anyone who has sung Ticket to Ride, or any other of the Mammoth amount of hits they have had. I sang along with each song that was played, cried a little when you saw their love for one another, and smiled through a lot of the backstage videos and candid photos that showed the true history of the biggest band that the world has ever known, and four young Liverpool lads who paved the way for the groups of today. This will make excellent viewing in the cinema and also the best present you can buy a fan of any type of music this year.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Director: Ron Howard
Writers: Mark Monroe, P.G. Morgan
Stars: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, George Harrison

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Garth Cremona (RIP)
Comic book creator and movie reviewer. You can find out more at www.dublinwriter.com
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