PAUL McCartney and Ringo Starr proved that little has changed from when The Beatles were in their heyday when they stumbled out of the after-party for the premiere of documentary Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years. Howard, John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, and George Harrison’s widow Olivia Harrison were among those at the star-filled screening, but the marquee guests were Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
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The film’s world premiere took place earlier today in the Beatles’ home city of Liverpool.
According to the director, he’s now at least semi-seriously eyeing the idea of putting together another Beatles documentary, this one focusing on the band’s history in the years following the period covered in Eight Days a Week.
“So that’s very emotional and very special to see that again”, he told reporters.
But now it can be told: the only reason Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr approved the project is because they were fans of Howard’s old TV shows.
Starr described their lasting fame as “beautiful”, adding: “People love the Beatles”.
“The music wasn’t being heard”, he said.
The band’s two surviving members will be joined by Oscar-winning director Ron Howard at the premiere in London’s Leicester Square.
The movie focuses on the years The Beatles played live from June 1962 until August 1966, which saw them performing 815 times in 15 countries.
“We tried to keep the live thing together, but it just finally became too much”.
As John Lennon says in one of his funniest rejoinders, if the band knew why people were so insane about them “we’d form another group and become managers”.
The Beatles played their last live performance three years after the Candlestick Park concert, on the rooftop of their Apple Records headquarters in London.
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“But it got out of hand and the story is that, in the end, it kind of forced us off the road so we had to come back to this studio and make Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.
