The surviving Beatles will get together for the British premiere of director Ron Howard’s film that documents the band’s chaotic years on the road.
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Sir Paul McCartney wasn’t “worried” about The Beatles losing money when they made a decision to retire from being a touring band.
The film’s world premiere took place earlier today in the Beatles’ home city of Liverpool. “So that’s very emotional and very special to see that again”.
And Ringo, 76, said that he is surprised how many bands nowadays have to use a different guitars for each song they perform, which was the opposite for The Beatles.
Howard said that as well as receiving help from McCartney and Starr for the film, Lennon’s and Harrison’s widows, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, who attended the premiere, had also contributed to the project.
Howard supplements the music – there’s nearly nothing past Revolver – with interviews with surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, plus famous fans like Whoopi Goldberg and Sigourney Weaver, who have fond memories of their teenybopper screaming years.
Touring made such demands on them, culminating in absurd scenes at Shea Stadium in NY and Candlestick Park in San Francisco, where they couldn’t hear themselves play before being whisked away like convicts in armoured vehicles, that in 1966 they resolved never to do it again.
“We were just this band of rockers who loved to do what we did”, Ringo adds.
It’s a part of our pop mythology that you could scarcely hear a note The Beatles played at any of those early live performances.
The documentary screening, which features the band’s behind-the-scenes footage, interviews and unheard music as it rose to superstardom fifty years ago, saw a star-studded premiere at London’s Leicester Square.
McCartney said that even though life became complicated for the band, in the beginning it was really quite simple.
Starr told the BBC they realised it was the moment to stop: “We had just had enough, we knew that was the last gig, it was time”.
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The Beatles played their last live performance three years after the Candlestick Park concert, on the rooftop of their Apple Records headquarters in London.
