What was it like to be in the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania? Sadly there are now only two people alive who can properly answer that question, but Ron Howard’s documentary gives us the chance to peek into the centre of the storm. Constructed from a mixture of interviews, contemporary footage and excerpts of live concerts, the film is an exhilarating and at times almost exhausting potted history of the Beatles, from their early days in Hamburg through to their decision to give up touring in 1966.

The footage of the Beatles larking about on camera is a simple joy: making absurd ad-libs as a succession of journalists offer increasingly inane questions. McCartney describes the Beatles during their early years as a perfectly-formed gang, hemmed in together by fame, and keeping each other sane. They’re funnier together than they ever could have been if their lines were scripted. The film also highlights an interesting example of their developing political sensitivities: in 1965 they refused to play to segregated audiences in the southern USA. Whoopi Goldberg’s memories of her first Beatles gig are particularly affecting.

… a sense of explosive chaos just barely held in check …

But by the end of the film, you certainly sympathise with their decision to retreat from the madness of touring. It’s as though we’re watching a timelapse film of a rotting Apple. In the space of little more than four years, compressed into just under 100 minutes, we see the early naivety, sheer energy and ebullience of John, Paul, George and Ringo gradually morph into exasperation, boredom, creative frustration and eventually fear. You can see the smiles slowly dripping from their faces when the red half of America dance pagan rituals around vinyl bonfires built from their records, or when an accidental slight to President Marcos threatens to spill over into serious violence. McCartney recounts a particularly poignant moment after their final gig at Candlestick Park, when they were bundled offstage into a bare metal box on wheels, where they slid around in the back as the van sped away from the venue. It’s hardly surprising that they’d had enough.

But before that, there was always the music. Early Beatles albums are often neglected in favour of more well-known and innovative records from Rubber Soul onwards, and understandably so; but those formative recordings suffered particularly from bad quality mixing when first released on CD. The relatively recent set of remasters, that allow you to actually hear the bass, have really helped to showcase the energy of those first few records. It’s very hard for anyone born after about 1965 to contextualise the Beatles. Their music is so ubiquitous that we struggle to understand how different it sounded back in the sixties. The talking heads on the documentary do a good job of putting that point across, Elvis Costello at one point talking about how strange Rubber Soul sounded when it was first released.

Howard’s documentary captures a sense of  explosive chaos just barely held in check as the Beatles hurtle around the world, playing to larger and larger crowds in bigger and bigger stadia, with nothing but ‘specially made’ 100-watt amps to play through. Most teenage guitarists these days have an amp that loud in their bedrooms. They were making it up as they went along, because no-one else had done it on this scale before: Brian Epstein was trying to organise stadium rock gigs before the concept had been invented. This led to such ludicrous events as the Shea Stadium concert, where they were plugged into the stadium’s PA, blasting out through distorting tannoy speakers to 55,000 screaming people a mile away, with a surreally empty baseball diamond between the band and their fans.

Fuck me, the Beatles were good.

Given all these factors, it is frankly astonishing that the live footage sounds as good as it does. There’s a real garage band intensity to the faster songs: Ringo absolutely thrashes away at his kit, George and John scratch out interlocking guitar riffs, and Paul bounces along on the bass. And there’s the singing. Even with no monitors, they can’t help but sing in tune, those apparently effortless two- or three-part harmonies that elevate even the most basic rock’n’roll standard to something approaching the sublime. Fuck me, the Beatles were good. You watch this and you can understand why so many teenagers just lost their minds when they heard it for the first time.

Even in the final bit of concert footage, the rooftop gig in 1969 when the Beatles had pretty much fallen apart as a group, they sound tighter than ever before. The Beatles just couldn’t help making good music together. And after all this time, all the millions of words written about them, all the miles of film shot about them, all the millions of screams, and millions of stupid internet arguments about whether they’re ‘over-rated’, their music remains. It’s wonderful stuff.

One final thing. If you go and see this film, don’t do what a good quarter of the audience have done at other screenings and leave when the final credits roll. Stay, and watch the full 30-minute Shea Stadium set that comes on afterwards. It’s well worth the wait.
httpvh://youtu.be/Mj0KLrrl2rs