After all this is gone
Who’d you rather be
The Beatles or the Rolling Stones
Oh seriously
You're going to make mistakes, you're young
Come on baby, play me something
Like "Here Comes the Sun."" – Metric
One can’t really discuss the 60s without mentioning the Beatles and their impact on pop culture. The 60s belonged to the Beatles. Sure, the Stones, Dylan, and the Beach Boys could all stake a claim, but the Beatles dominated the music scene in a career that exactly spanned that decade. The 60s music scene was practically defined by the Beatles’ influence. Are you getting the picture? I don’t understand people who don’t love the Beatles. I really don’t. I nearly lost my mind when I heard a customer say that she loved the film, Across the Universe, and was glad to hear that the songs were sung by people who had “voices that were so much better than the Beatles.” Yeah, it almost got ugly. I used to think that I had to choose a favorite Beatles era, early, mid, or late Beatles until I realized that I could appreciate the lump sum and all of the changes in between. As much as I love the Beatles’ music, I could never replicate what it was like to experience the Beatles craze while they were active. These films, however, help open up a window into that experience.
A Hard Day’s Night (1964, Richard Lester)
The Beatles’ first foray into film turned out to be just as legendary as the band. Now considered not only one of the best music films, but also one of the most beloved films in general, A Hard Day’s Night was the logical next step for a band who was dominating the charts. In fact, just a few months before, the Beatles held twelve spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart at the same time. But, could they act? The answer to that question is a definite yes, as exhibited by the humor, charm, and distinct personality of each member. With a simple plotline, involving the group taking a train from their hometown of Liverpool to London to appear on a television show, John, Paul, George, and Ringo are allowed to be themselves and make it up as they go along.
Though the press tagged them with nicknames such as “the quiet one” and “the funny one,” this film proves that they were all funny. The scenes with the band responding to questions from reporters is a perfect example of their dry wit. A reporter asks John, “How did you find America?” to which he responds, “Turned left at Greenland.” When asked “What do you call that hairstyle you’re wearing?,” George answers, “Arthur.” Ringo gets a pivotal role in the film, with a somewhat realistic and meta look at how he was most likely not the most loved by fans. That is turned on its ear with the arrival of his actual fan mail. Ringo gets some alone time in the movie, with the very moving and emotional “This Boy” as his theme lf loneliness. And that brings us to the main selling point of A Hard Day’s Night, which is the music of the Beatles.
This wasn’t just a leap into acting; this was a showcase for the Beatles as all-around performers. I’d say it is a long form music video, but it is far more than that. With a balance of upbeat hits such as the title track, “She Loves You,” “I Should Have Known Better,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” and the sweet ballads, “If I Fell,” and “And I Love Her” showcase the band’s versatility. Sure, Elvis had screaming fans in the 50s, and lots of 50s musicians became pop culture idols, but the entire world had seen nothing like the Beatles before. By 1964, the Beatles didn’t just belong to England, or even just England and the U.S. They weren’t just pop stars, or even pop stars who became film stars. The Beatles were icons. The Beatles are icons. A Hard Day’s Night merely put the stamp on that claim. Not only have countless bands since copied the Beatles, but filmmakers have also continually divined inspiration from the film’s scenes and images. It is difficult for even the most discriminating of music and film fans to not fall in love with the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night.
Help! (1965, Richard Lester)
Made just one short year after A Hard Day’s Night, Help! diverged as much from it as it tried to emulate it and recapture its success. Rather than a simple “mockumentary” plot, following the Beatles in an adventure that could have easily been taken from their actual lives, Help! attempts to create a 60s era spy plot, but in an albeit goofy, nonsensical, and stoned manner. Yes, the legend goes that the Beatles were high during most of the making of this movie. It somehow neither adds nor detracts from the finished product. Sure, the idea of the Beatles being targeted by a Thuggee cult is somewhat the result of a late night smokeout, you know, the kind where you think everything you say is brilliant and should be written down, but the director still amazingly managed to pull it together.
Just like A Hard Day’s Night, the music in Help! takes center stage. One can pay very little attention to the crazy plot, concentrating only on the songs. I’ve always thought Help!, at least as an album, to be incredibly underrated in the Beatles catalog. “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” alone makes it an instant classic. The difference in the complexity of the songs, in the maturity, in just one short year, is astounding. I’ve always thought that when you look at the Beatles’ first few singles as compared to the last few, there is a marked difference in style. But, one can detect great changes in an even shorter period of time. We can argue forever about whether drugs or alcohol aid the creative process, but the Beatles might be the easiest example to put into the “pro” column. But, it turns out, this movie’s craziness can’t be blamed on drugs, or even the Beatles, but instead on Richard Lester’s prescience of the future of hero comedies. After all, it was only one year later that Batman premiered in all its campy glory.
Help! is definitely campy, shlocky, ridiculous, and entertaining at every turn. Despite this, there is also some extraordinary filmmaking going on. The skiing scene, set to “Ticket to Ride,” is phenomenal. There is a fantastic little piece of work in which the camera views the band through a ski pole basket, as if we were watching them through a ViewMaster. The Beatles’ apartment, with four separate outer doors that all lead to one large communal area, is another memorable and clever visual gag. Help! might not be on the same level as A Hard Day’s Night, and, in trying to outdo it somewhat misses the mark, but it is another great showcase for the mythology of the Beatles, the people and their music.
Magical Mystery Tour (1967, Bernard Knowles)
This might be cheating a little. Magical Mystery Tour wasn’t really a theatrical film. As an alternative to touring, which the Beatles no longer wanted to do, they decided to remain the public eye by creating television specials and films. The live performance of “All You Need is Love” is just one example of that effort. Magical Mystery Tour is another one, an hour long special that is best described as a prototype for an extended music video. The copy I saw, which is probably the best that can be found, was of incredibly poor quality. The reason for this is most likely because it was horribly panned upon its first airing and thus maybe no one thought it would be worth preserving. History tells a different story.
Falling in between the iconic albums, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the self-titled White Album, it is hard to say it measures up to these classics, but there are some great songs here. “Fool on the Hill” and the title track are just two examples. But, the real gems are “Your Mother Should Know,” a song written specifically for the film to fit into a more “stately” choreographed section, and “I Am the Walrus,” containing nonsensical lyrics written by John Lennon that were meant to confound those who were studying lyrical content. There is no discussing the later era of the Beatles without touching on “I Am the Walrus.” I’ve read that this video performance of the song is one of the only known in existence given that they had stopped touring. That alone is reason enough to watch this short film. The nonsensical lyrics make me think of one of my high school English teachers. A friend of mine, skeptical about the teacher’s interpretation of poetry, gave her a nonsense poem he had written to see what she would say about it. But, the truth is, that doesn’t prove anything. The beauty of my friend’s poem, and of “I Am the Walrus,” is that interpretation is in the mind of the audience. That is why we are still talking about the lyrical content of “I Am the Walrus” some 40 plus years later.
There are also some scenes that lead us to believe that the Beatles wanted this special to be more than just a stopgap measure between albums to release music. One can see that the band really made an effort to produce something artistic. The instrumental piece, “Flying,” is part and parcel to this effort. While some may see it as a weird waste, or an overlong segue, it is really something to behold, visually and sonically. Then there are the comedy segments. There is a really strange portion in which a waiter using a shovel serves Ringo’s supposed Aunt spaghetti. The waiter, played by John Lennon, is a dead ringer for Eric Idle, making it appear like a Monty Python sketch in more than one way. Making another tie to Monty Python, and a bridge to a future indie rock band, there is the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, fronted by funny man, Neil Innes, singing a song called, wait for it, the now famously titled, “Death Cab for Cutie.” What these scenes were meant to accomplish or the purpose they were meant to serve is beyond me, as they don’t quite fit in with this “video album,” but they are not entirely unwelcome.
As a last note, I’ve always debated the “real” stories behind the origins of Beatles lore. For instance, it has been asserted that “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was based on a drawing by John’s son, Julian, and not from the initials, LSD. That being the official story, who is to say that Julian didn’t hear a lot of chatter around the house about LSD and incorporated it into his drawing? The same can be said for the title track of this film. “Roll up” is the first exhortation from the song. The band claims that it recalls the carnival barkers of old, but it is very difficult to avoid association with marijuana. All I’m saying is that there were probably a lot of reasons for the band to avoid admitting drug use at the time, but we’ve now moved on. We’ve learned that lots of writers drank and did drugs. Do we judge the Beatles’ work differently now that they’ve admitted some drug use? I’d argue absolutely not. Magical Mystery Tour might be a drug-fueled fever dream, but it has a hell of a band doing the soundtrack.
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