Eight Days a Week: A Crucial Piece of the Story

Having listened to the Beatles Channel on Sirius XM Radio every day since the glorious day it debuted back in May, having read a chapter or two of Rob Sheffield's wonderful Dreaming the Beatles on some of those days, too, I'm surprised it took me so long to see Ron Howard's documentary Eight Days a Week on Hulu, where it's been playing since September.

I'd heard of it, but I'm doing so many things, I forgot to check when it would be screenable.  And, actually, it was hearing Dennis Elsas talk about it on his Fab Fourum this past week - which I listen to on the Beatles Channel, along with Peter Asher's From Me to You, just about every week - that made me realize, hey, this movie has been on Hulu for a good few months now.

It's an impressive work, which provides crucial insight, an almost visceral explanation, of what the Beatles got out of touring in the first place - the incredible energy and ratification they got back from their audiences, a reflection of what they were giving out - and why they decided to end it, in favor of devoting all their energies to recording, with Sgt. Pepper being the result.  I never attended any of those fabled concerts in the 1960s, but my wife and I had great seats at Paul McCartney's concert in the Nassau Coliseum in September, and got a great dose of that energy, still astonishing and inspiring, in 2017.

The personalities of the four Beatles, which we already knew, also come through in the movie, and expand what we know of them.  The humor of George Harrison, the discomfort of Paul and John at John's statement that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, the dynamo of Ringo's drumming, are all things I didn't quite realize before I saw the movie.  The consummate musicianship of the four, who play tight as a drum, with perfect harmony, in concerts at stadiums with thousands of people cheering so the Beatles could hardly hear one another, comes through beautifully in every song.

The documentary also has some nice minor touches, like Larry Kane, who toured with the Beatles in the 1960s, and my wife and I got to watch as an Eyewitness News anchor in New York City in the late 1970s.  I would've liked to see at least a little more of the Beatles' wives and girlfriends, but, hey, that could be another documentary in itself.

All in all, Eight Days a Week provides another piece of our understanding of a musical group not only the most extraordinary in our lifetime, but, as the movie implies, in the history of humanity.