Eight Days a Week

(Dir. Ron Howard) (2016)

For any Beatles baby, or post-Fab Four folks who want to see what the fuss was about, this documentary, featuring engaging new footage but no new insights, is an entertaining and memorable review of the touring years of the World’s Most Famous Pop Group.

The Beatles were an ‘event sociological’ in the 1960s: you can use them as a parlour game to track through that wacky decade:

Cavern Club

Brian Epstein

Mop Tops

Jelly Babies

Yeah, yeah, yeah

Pierre Cardin jackets

Ed Sullivan Show

Milkmen whistling their tunes

“Rattle your jewellery”

A Hard Day’s Night

MBEs

Help!

Live at Shea Stadium

Rubber Soul

Last stadium concert at Candlestick Park, San Francisco

‘More popular than Jesus’

Sgt. Pepper

‘Impromptu’ on the Roof

Paul is Dead

Yoko Oh No

And so on.  For the interested millennial, the appalling quality of the live sound, and the uncertain timing of the band as a whole (they couldn’t hear themselves let alone each other, for all the screaming) loom large, but the mass adulation is the most startling thing, even for people that were there.  In Adelaide, South Australia, for instance, the crowds were astonishing (see main image and You Tube footage, below).  As for the lads themselves, they come across as good-natured, straight-forward, surprisingly patient and rather kind.  Whilst this is an Apple Corp. Production, there is enough real evidence to make you believe this, or at least want to.