“Eight Days a Week”, subtitled “The Touring Years”, presents The Beatles as a young band circling the globe at a feverish pace – from their early club gigs in 1962 to their final show in 1966 – out of fear that the world might soon forget them.
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The film was made by Oscar-winning director Ron Howard and is being debuted tonight in Liverpool and in London’s Leicester Square.
“We were just this band of rockers who loved to do what we did”, Ringo adds.
Fans can look forward to remastered footage from their historic Shea Stadium concert in NY, the first rock gig played to more than 55,000 people. “We know there’s new footage that the fans sent in, so that’s very exciting”.
In an interview with Shaun Keaveny for United Kingdom station BBC Radio 6 Music, McCartney said: “I don’t remember being anxious (about money) no”. Lots of now famous creative types check in regarding how they were influenced by the Beatles as kids: we hear from Eddie Izard, Richard Curtis, Sigourney Weaver, Whoopi Goldberg, and Elvis Costello, among others.
“I said that we are opening the movie, and Tulsa’s audience would like to hear his thoughts, and I included an image of his granite medallion” with his name on it, Foxen said, referring to the theater’s “Walk of Fame” markers on the sidewalk in front of the theater.
The film makes use of a rich archive of old footage – pictures, videos and audio recordings – of the band at the height of Beatlemania, with screaming fans, snippets of the cheekiness of the then young men and the group at work in the studio.
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Along the way, Larry Kane, the Miami journalist who toured twice with the Beatles, weighs in, as do Whoopi Goldberg (“the idea that everyone was welcome-I got that idea specifically from them”), Sigourney Weaver (a teenager at the 1964 Hollywood Bowl show) and Elvis Costello, who confesses he at first disliked the album “Rubber Soul”. “And so it’s a great thing that we actually even put it in the contract”.
