Review of The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years (2016) by Chris M — 27 Oct 2016

Paul and Ringo also have their slots, without which the film might feel rather haunted, or off-target. Commentary by Richard Curtis (nine when The Beatles quit touring) and Eddie Izzard (four) is offered, needlessly I think, to guarantee that TV- and Hugh Grant-watching Brits of a certain age - i.e. under 40 - can be drawn into the story without feeling they're being taken back to the 1930s.

Alphas can be awarded for tackling civil rights and The Beatles' insistence that an audience in Jacksonville in 1964 be unsegregated, and for interviews with Elvis Costello and author Jon Savage, who provide intelligent glosses on the music, necessarily, over and beyond the chaos of touring. Gammas for mentioning cannabis just once and LSD - the single-most important influence on the four in 1965-6 - not at all. Nor does the awkward topic of the dreadfully disabled being wheeled backstage for some kind of mad, miracle "Beatles cure" get a look-in. It should.

Shea Stadium in August 1965 was the biggest show The Beatles ever did, and the restored TV footage of that pops up as a footnote to Howard's film. Quite a lot of the half-hour has long been available on YouTube but seeing it here, properly edited and licensed, is a total joy. Virtually none of the sound is original - The Beatles overdubbed the Shea songs in January 1966 before the programme was broadcast a few weeks later (and then in Britain never again) - but it is worth sticking around for, as it's the most substantial stretch of Beatles live there is.

Or almost. After the touring story, two tracks, "Don't Let Me Down" and "I've Got a Feeling", are dropped in from the extraordinary rooftop concert (not, in fact, an official concert in any way at all) of January 1969, in Savile Row. These come from the final Beatles film, Let It Be, released a few months after they'd broken up. As far as I know, it has not been screened anywhere since the early 1970s.

The Beatles' company Apple Corps have Let It Be - this I do have on the best authority - in hand. We will see it again one day. If the quality throughout is anything like these digitally enhanced and cleaned-up few minutes in Eight Days a Week, the story of the group live will be magnificently complete on screen. Even on the precipice, before their immolation began in spring 1969, the four were smiling and relishing their wonderful work together. Howard has put these scenes in to tantalise us: when will Let It Be come?

For the moment it is enough for him to remind us, as if we need reminding at this stage of his achievement, that The Beatles were and remain unalterably the best in the world.