Who doesn’t wish they could strap themselves into a DeLorean and head back to the sixties to see The Beetles live? While that dream is as far away as hover boards, a cure of the common cold or our childhood hopes for a happy life on the road with Alicia Silverstone and Liv Tyler, you can relive their touring years in The Beatles: Eight Day’s A Week film, which will be making its way to DVD shortly.
With Ron Howard overseeing the project, it was always going to get a whole lot of care and attention to detail, and from the look of the trailer below it’s a fitting tribute to the band on the road. With a long run of gigs, ranging from the smaller, earlier venues to the huge stadium gigs, The Beatles spent a lot of time touring together, as well as smashing out the hits, and the film provides as good a window as we’re likely ever going to get into what the mania of it all was actually like.
Release date
Cinema
The music documentary arrived on the big screen on the 19th September 2016, giving us a chance to at least pretend that we’re sixties children. While it was available on release in the UK, we’re willing to bet that it didn’t get quite enough coverage to be the box office draw that it could have been. However, even with the relative quiet of its marketing machine, it still managed to go on to be the #1 film in the UK, which is a pretty significant marker for the band’s continued popularity today.
DVD, Blu-ray and digital download
The Beatles: Eight Days A Week DVD UK release date has been confirmed for the 21st November 2016, when it will also be arriving on Blu-ray and digital download. You can check out the special feature and extras that you get bundled with each below.
The Beatles: Eight Days A Week synopsis
The film focuses on the Fab Four during their touring years between 1962 and 1966. While it’s only a short four years, the band crammed in a lot of activity all over the world taking them from The Cavern Club in Liverpool to their final live gig at Candlestick Park (former home to the San Francisco Giants) in 1966, when the baseball stadium was just six years old. The film promises to get into the outer fringes of the inner circle of the band, giving a little insight on how they made decisions (rock, paper, scissors, brick), how they came up with and made the music we all know and love (visceral mediation and Earl Grey tea binges) and how they managed to get along together, the little tinkers (naked hugs, plus affectionate, but apologetic notes).
In addition to the live footage of the band playing at iconic venues, the documentary has also been created with the full cooperation of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison, so you can also look forward to a number of interviews throughout. Ringo even manages to keep his peace and indeed love Tourette’s under check.
However, perhaps the most important aspect of the release is that it will reignite the world’s greatest debate: just who the hecking fire was the top Beatle? For some, it’s a simple choice between McCartney or Lennon and for others it’s a complex four way that threatens to end in a Twister-style muddle. The Yoko factor comes into it a fair bit, but then with both Paul and Ringo still around and occasionally making fools of themselves you may be exclusively posthumous in your vacillation. For us, we’re stuck in a perpetual mind palace at the very thought of it, which we’re not planning on leaving until there’s a followup doc from Howard on the next four years in The Beatles’ story.
DVD and Blu-ray extras and special features
Both the 2-disc deluxe edition DVD and Blu-ray contain the exact same extras and special features:
- 64 page booklet with an introduction from director Ron Howard, essay by music journalist and author
Jon Savage and rare photos from The Beatles’ private archive - Words & Music – a look back on the band’s songwriting, innovation and musical influences. The 24-minute featurette includes unseen interviews with Paul and Ringo.
- Early Clues To A New Direction – special feature on The Beatles as a collective; how comedy played a big part in their everyday lives, the impact of women on their early lives and songs, and the music that kicked off the band’s meteoric rise to fame. It features interviews and footage of John, Paul, George & Ringo, along with Paul Greengrass, Stephen Stark, Peter Asher, Malcolm Gladwell, Sigourney Weaver, Whoopi Goldberg, Richard Curtis, Elvis Costello and Simon Schama. Once again the interviews with Paul and Ringo are unseen.
- Liverpool – a portrait of the Liverpool during their formative years in the late 1950s and early 1960s with insight from fan club secretary Freda Kelly and their previous manager Allan Williams an early.
- The Beatles in Concert – a series of five rarely seen full length performances of The Beatles live in concert including Twist and Shout, She Loves You, Can’t Buy Me Love, You Can’t Do That and Help!
- Three Beatles’ Fans
- Ronnie Spector and The Beatles
- Shooting A Hard Day’s Night
- The Beatles in Australia
- Recollections of Shea Stadium
- The Beatles in Japan
- An alternative opening for the film
Production
In addition to Ron Howard directing the film, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week was written by Mark Monroe with Paul Crowder having done the editing and Marc Ambrose down as the supervising producer. It was co-produced by Matthew White, Stuart Samuels, Bruce Higham, Nigel Sinclair, Scott Pascucci and Brian Grazer, along with Ron Howard.
First impressions
For us, this is a film that all music fans should watch, because it features the most influential band in history putting in the hard yards to play their music live to their fans. With Ron Howard in the director’s chair, it can only really be a brilliant documentary. While we still haven’t entirely forgiven him for the sweaty ball that was In The Heart Of The Sea, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week should be a DVD/Blu-ray that we’ll happily watch a fair few times, which makes up a little of the bad water.
