The Beatles are putting down another musical milestone. Just over 50 years ago, the most successful pop group in history played its final public concert – now commemorated with a new film, which is a fitting tribute to its rollercoaster time on the road.“The Beatles. Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years” highlights the show at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29, 1966. Nobody in the audience knew that it was to be the last show by the British quartet which had captured the hearts of Americans and generated what swiftly became known as “Beatlemania.”There were indeed plenty of warning signs that the band was struggling to survive amid the wave of adulation, groupies, relentless press attention, and gigs where the screaming of thousands of fans made the music inaudible. Drummer Ringo Starr recalled that he could not hear the others’ voices or their guitars amid the pandemonium.The footage shows the four racing through crazy crowds virtually trying to rip their clothes off, and remarkably escaping injury in the hubbub. Some of the warnings were all too obvious and public, such as John Lennon’s cry for assistance in “Help!” in 1965.But it is only now that much more emerges, thanks to Ron Howard, the director of “Apollo 13” and the trilogy of “The Da Vinci Code” movies. His appeal on social media for archive material proved productive – something not possible years ago, and perhaps unlikely to be needed in a future where many concert-goers immediately share clips on YouTube and elsewhere.In a historical labor of love, Howard’s team trawled through thousands of hours of documentary footage and photographs. They pulled together a lot of material either previously unseen or not that hasn't been viewed in decades. Most notably, a woman who filmed that last Candlestick Park show with a Super 8 cine camera came forward – she had kept the film cartridge under a bed for years, and remarkably it remained in good condition. The band’s final waves of goodbye to the crowd and expressions of relief are all too telling in retrospect.If you think that there can be nothing about the Fab Four that hasn’t been said before, and probably said a thousand times, this movie is worth watching. The Hollywood audio has been restored by Giles Martin, son of the late Beatles producer Sir George Martin. “Live at the Hollywood Bowl,” an album meant as a companion piece that was released this week, is sourced from three-track tapes found in the Capital Studios archive in the US, which proved to be much better quality than the London equivalents used to produce the earlier album. Four new songs are added to the record, which has long been difficult to obtain in its previous form.The grainy and washed-out visuals have been cleaned up to eye-popping clarity, in much the same way as “Yellow Submarine,” “Magical Mystery Tour,” and other films have been restored for this first feature-length (95-minute) documentary authorized by the Beatles since their 1970 breakup. The 11-hour “Anthology” DVD is the only thing that came close.The obligatory interviews with surviving members Sir Paul McCartney, 74, and Starr, 76, are coupled with strenuous efforts to make the story seem relevant to a younger audience. There is an appearance by actress Sigourney Weaver, who attended one show when she was a teenager, and – more of a stretch – by comedian Eddie Izzard, who was barely of school age at the time and with less direct knowledge. Singer-songwriter Elvis Costello also appears, while actress Whoopi Goldberg notes that the quartet was “colorless” in a discriminatory world (the band refused to play in front of segregated audiences.)The film somehow has to give enough to satisfy the millions of long-term aficionados while appealing to those less familiar with their rise to fame. As McCartney points out, the act was not quite an instant success: “A lot of people thought we were an overnight sensation. We weren’t. People didn’t realize we had all this development.”The musicians started out with original drummer Pete Best, who was left on the sidelines – both then and in this movie, where it seems every sentence with his name should also have the word “airbrush.” They had an invaluable apprenticeship in Germany, rehearsing, playing in clubs eight hours a day, and working out a lot of the early repertoire. This got played and perfected at shows around the UK before the venues got ever larger. The 1964 Ed Sullivan show, watched by 73 million peo0ple, gets a key mention, which was followed by the explosion of sales, with the Britons shifting 2.5 million records in nine days and holding the top spots in singles and LP charts.The Beatles had been making most of their money by touring, but then retreated to London’s Abbey Road studio. There, away from the concert craziness, they created some of their greatest works, including “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “The Beatles (White Album).” It was only close to the band’s breakup that McCartney suggested that they get back on the road in a bid to restore excitement and camaraderie. This had rather the opposite effect as they worked on a back-to-basics collection originally conceived as “Get Back.” It did, however, result in the unofficial short concert on top of the band’s Savile Row base – some of which is tacked on to the movie, but at least it adds context. (Roll on the likely release of a new “Let It Be”: hundreds of songs were worked on during those sessions, with many still unreleased.)It may not Beatlemania all over again, but the film and album constitute a valuable introduction. The songs featured here – raw, rocky numbers such as “Twist and Shout” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” – may not be their finest, but help to show how the four became the biggest-selling musical artists in the US alone, and shifted 600 million records worldwide. Some Beatles songs will last for centuries – “Yesterday,” “Hey Jude,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Blackbird” – and that’s the perfect response to those Kanye West fans that asked who McCartney was when the two collaborated. West has never been through such a baptism of fire on the road.There is a controversy endlessly debated in the movie after Lennon’s remarks about The Beatles being more popular than Jesus. There can, however, be little doubt that they were and are bigger than Yeezus.“The Beatles: Eight Days a Week” is on general release in the UK and elsewhere. Its release date is September 15 in the US, with streaming on Hulu shortly after. “Live at the Hollywood Bowl” is out September 9.
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