On February 7, 1964, America—and subsequently the world—changed irrevocably. The Beatles landed at John F. Kennedy Airport and met thousands of adoring, screaming fans on the runway, changing the brain chemistry of a nation in need of something good and lighting the fuse of a cultural revolution.
This is the premise The Beatles ’64a new documentary presented to audiences by Apple Corps Ltd., a subsidiary of the band. In November 1963, President Kennedy was shot and killed while driving in his motorcade in Dallas, a shocking moment that sparked nationwide mourning. Some people never recover from the trauma of such a violent death live on television. A few months later, when the Beatles performed on television, a new generation couldn’t live without it. The Ed Sullivan Showwatched by an estimated 73 million people. As interviewee Joe Queenan tearfully put it, it was like “the lights came on” and the world became bright and full of color for the first time.
The new documentary, now streaming on Disney+, follows the band’s two-week tour of the United States, their first time away from Europe. The film, produced by Martin Scorsese, uses archival and newly restored footage to track their journey from the moment they step off the plane to the moment they return home. It features numerous interviews with people in the eye of the storm, including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and photographer Harry Benson, as well as with enamored fans on the street or via the subway.
While the story may already be familiar to Beatles fans, the documentary pulls no punches in describing the band’s visit and the context surrounding it. In archival interviews and newspaper clippings, a hostile press likened the band to “German measles,” and at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., the gap between the working-class band and its bureaucratic, stuffy surroundings was laid bare. Exploring the divisions of race, class, and gender through interviews with Motown’s Smokey Robinson and the Isley Brothers’ Ronald Isley, the Beatles were vocal about their influence early in their career. They reported it.
On the eve of the film’s release, director David Tedeschi and producer Margaret Bodde met with advertising billboard On the challenges of making the story fresh again, surprises in the editing room, and Scorsese’s role in shaping the film’s narrative.
The film was released on the 60th anniversary of their arrival in the United States. Why is this story still relevant?
Bode: There seems to be no end to the interest in them. When the Beatles’ final single “Now and Then” came out, young adults and teens on TikTok were crying and talking about it fondly, and these weren’t even the same people who first discovered the Beatles in 1964 The grandson of man. They have a timeless appeal.
In fact, they came to America shortly after a beloved president was assassinated and the country was in grief and despair, and they brought their own personalities and music with them. Maybe there will always be a moment – America is in a similar state of division right now, and no one can agree on one thing. But when the Beatles came along, they were something that people could rally around this light, their humor, and the hope they brought through their music, humor and personality.
compared to peter jackson returnsuggesting that the group is four separate characters with a common history and relationship, The Beatles ’64 Caught them in a rather innocent moment. They’re kind of like the same person…
Bode: They do look like a unit. People don’t know which one is which yet. Albert and David Maysles were filming this period in New York, and when Albert asked John to hit the microphone, he called him George instead of John! You know in six months no one is going to make a mistake like this, but it’s so new and everyone in the band seems to be living a dream they couldn’t have imagined, but it’s happening.
Tedeschi: It was so unexpected. This is the most powerful weapon against the cynicism of the New York press corps. Stories circulated for days about how ridiculous their hair and music was, how they resembled wolves ready to hunt their prey. Then it quickly turned into a different story.
Do you think part of their appeal is that they are so disconnected from American culture?
Tedeschi: They’re exotic yet familiar. That’s what Joe Quinnan says, they’re from Liverpool, but they might as well be from Mars.
Bodde: As a rock band, they were one of the first, they were on the scene before other bands like their contemporaries. Their separation from America really allowed them to be more open to embracing black music from America, like soul, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll; they loved it, which is why they were so excited to come to America in the first place. They really wanted to meet their heroes and hear this music live because they had seen Motown come to the UK.
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How to bring something new to a subject we already know well?
Tedeschi: The challenge we faced immediately was, we knew this was a very famous story, we knew it had been told many times, so what was new? I’d say a lot of it is because of the recovery [Peter Jackson’s] Park Road Post Production and Giles Martin [son of the Fab Four’s producer George] There were some remixes of the performances, which featured material that had never been available before. The footage shot by the Meisels brothers looks like it was shot yesterday. More importantly, the Washington Coliseum concert is a wonderful record of the Beatles as a live band.
While there were interviews with the band throughout, it was the fans and their experiences that really stuck with me. There’s a great clip of the Gonzalez family and a young girl watching it in real time. Why did you want to focus the film on these people?
Bode: 73 million people watched the show online The Ed Sullivan Showa shared moment in American history that took place in the Gonzales family’s small apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. And then you hear Jamie Bernstein [daughter of conductor Leonard Bernstein] Talking about the black and white TV rolling from the library to the dining room at eight o’clock, watching it while eating dinner. Whether you are working class or privileged, whoever you are, this is a moment of shared interest and joy that everyone can relate to.
What role did Martin Scorsese play in the making of this film?
Tedeschi: The two of us have been working with him for a long time, over 20 years. We talked specifically about the challenges in the beginning because there were a lot of Beatles films and a lot of material, and he was very helpful in shaping the thread, and then he would watch the edits. And tell us what works and what doesn’t.
BODE: Martin loved music and he talked about if he had one talent he wished he had, it was to play an instrument and be a musician. He found that everything about music inspired his own creativity. He hears a musical movement or song, which inspires his vision, and he already has the song in his head before he takes the photo. He was a preservationist and historian, so music documentaries—whether he directed or produced them—incorporate many of his concerns and interests.
One of the things that he and David do really well is put historical context into these musical moments, and I think that’s what makes this film so captivating. When you talk about what you can bring to the Beatles, you can bring the story of America at that time, the story of the social revolution that was coming, and ideas about who women and men were, racial consciousness in general, every beginning People protesting against the Vietnam War, of which the Beatles were a part and integrated as individuals and as a group.
When you look back at this footage, is there anything that surprises you?
Tedeschi: The most surprising thing to me was learning that there was an organization that was opposed to the Beatles and actively working to make them fail. There’s a pretty shocking scene at the British Embassy in Washington, where they had a party and they were horribly mistreated. The staff looked down upon them and treated them like inferior human beings. John said some kind of “animal” came to Ringo and cut off his hair. It’s powerful. I didn’t expect such a reaction.
At the end of the film, the film reviews the generational changes at that time. Lennon even called his post-war generation “the generation that was allowed to survive”…
Bode: The scene where John is talking. [Canadian media theorist] Marshall McLuhan proposed this in 1969, and it was a true revelation. The level of insight and intelligence with which Lennon put this idea together was an astonishing idea that because you didn’t join the military, you could pick up a guitar or a paintbrush… you could do other things. This is freedom, right?
