NEW YORK app Likely most people have seen iconic footage of the Beatles performing on appThe Ed Sullivan Show.app But how many have seen Paul McCartney during that same U.S. trip feeding seagulls off his hotel balcony?
That moment app as well as George Harrison and John Lennon goofing around by exchanging their jackets app are part of the Disney+ documentary appBeatles app64,app an intimate look at the English bandapps first trip to America that uses rare and newly restored footage.
It streams today.
appItapps so fun to be the fly on the wall in those really intimate moments,app says Margaret Bodde, who produced alongside Martin Scorsese. appItapps just this incredible gift of time and technology to be able to see it now with the decades of time stripped away so that you really feel like youappre there.app
appBeatles app64app leans into footage of the 14-day trip filmed by documentarians Albert and David Maysles, who left behind 11 hours of the Fab Four goofing around in New Yorkapps Plaza hotel or traveling. It was restored by Park Road Post in New Zealand.
appItapps beautiful, although itapps black and white and itapps not widescreen,app director David Tedeschi says. appItapps like it was shot yesterday and it captures the youth of the four Beatles and the fans.app
The footage is augmented by interviews with the two surviving members of the band and people whose lives were impacted, including some of the women who as teens stood outside their hotel hoping to catch a glimpse of the Beatles.
appIt was like a crazy love,app fan Vickie Brenna-Costa recalls in the film. appI canappt really understand it now. But then, it was natural.app
The film shows the four heartthrobs flirting and dancing at the Peppermint Lounge disco, Harrison noodling with a Woody Guthrie riff on his guitar and tells the story of Ronnie Spector sneaking the band out a hotel back exit and up to Harlem to eat barbecue.
The documentary coincides with the release of a box set of vinyl albums collecting the bandapps seven U.S. albums released in app64 and early app65 app appMeet The Beatles!,app appThe Beatlesapp Second Album,app appA Hard Dayapps Nightapp (the movie soundtrack), appSomething New,app appThe Beatlesapp Story,app appBeatles app65app and appThe Early Beatles.app They had been out of print on vinyl since 1995.
The Beatlesapp U.S. visit in 1964 also included concerts at Carnegie Hall, a gig at the Washington Coliseum in Washington, D.C., and a visit to Miami, where the band met Muhammad Ali. The film shows members of the band reading newspaper coverage of themselves.
appBeatles app64app tries to explain why young people were so besotted by John, Paul, George and Ringo. Their visit came just months after the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy and Tedeschi argues Beatlemania was a salve for a nation.
appPart of it is I think that the light was just off. They were depressed. Everything was dark. And appI Want to Hold Your Handapp lit them up,app Tedeschi says.
