FROM THE UNRELEASED BEATLES: MUSIC AND FILM:
The complete film of
the Beatles'
first US concert on February 11, 1964 at Washington Coliseum, as well
as footage of their dress rehearsal at for The Ed Sullivan Show on February
16, 1964, which was filmed but not broadcast.
February 11, 1964
Washington Coliseum, Washington, DC
Roll Over Beethoven
From Me to You
I Saw Her Standing There
This Boy
All My Loving
I Wanna Be Your Man
Please Please Me
Till There Was You
She Loves You
I Want to Hold Your Hand
Twist and Shout
Long Tall Sally
Ask most people to name the Beatles’ first American concert, and
they’d probably say it was their February 12 appearance (at which they
actually gave two shows) at Carnegie Hall in New York. However, it
actually took place the day before in Washington, DC, at the Washington
Coliseum, though the group had already played before a nationwide
television audience on The Ed
Sullivan Show on February 9. So big a phenomenon were the
Beatles already in the United States—though they’d been virtually
unknown in the country only about six weeks before—that the performance
was filmed by CBS television on black-and-white video, with Brian
Epstein’s permission. On March 14 and 15, the film CBS made from what
they shot—together with separate footage from Beach Boys and Lesley
Gore concerts—was shown in movie theaters as a closed-circuit
broadcast. (The Beach Boys and Gore did not play on the Coliseum bill,
though it’s sometimes been mistakenly reported that they did, due to
all three acts’ appearance in the same telecast.)
Excerpts from the film have shown up in numerous
video compilations, including The
Beatles Anthology. What’s more, in 2003, Passport released a DVD
entitled The Beatles in Washington
D.C., February 11, 1964. So what makes this qualify as an entry
in an overview of unissued Beatles footage?
Plenty, actually. For as happens way too often when
historically important films are repackaged for video and DVD release,
that disc neither contains the whole concert, nor can it help breaking
what doesn’t need to be fixed, by adding audio interview snippets over
some of the between-song passages. Yes, it does add a few clips from
press conferences and promo ads for the event. But really, an event as
momentous as this should be experienced start to finish, without
unnecessary editing and overdubs. It’s fortunate that the original film
does exist, not only because it’s the straight historical record, but
also because it might just be the most exciting on-screen, genuinely
live Beatlemania of all.
There are things to be said against the video of
this concert. The image quality is dark, grainy, and flickery; the audio
imperfect, particularly in the instrumental balance; and the camera
angles few and basic. The stage setup was surprisingly primitive in
some respects, with vocal microphone failures and rudimentary
amplification that barely stood a fighting chance against eight
thousand hysterical fans. But guess what? It doesn’t really matter. For
here are the early Beatles at their onstage best. They’re more visibly
delighted, indeed almost overwhelmed, by the crowd’s enthusiasm here
than at any time before or since. Despite the seeming overnight success
of their invasion of America, it had in reality been a long hard climb
to the top, taking about seven years of diligent work and numerous
excruciating setbacks, and also a year or so where they’d made
virtually no inroads into the US market despite their mushrooming
British superstardom. This was the payoff, and though the group would
get fed up with touring before screaming teenagers within a couple of
years, at the Washington Coliseum they were if anything having an even
greater time than their admirers. They said as much in a few comments
directly after the concert (as quoted in Bruce Spizer’s The Beatles Are Coming!), Paul
calling the gig their “most exciting yet,” and Ringo adding, “Some of
them even threw jelly babies in bags and they hurt like hailstones, but
they could have ripped me apart and I couldn’t have cared less. What an
audience! I could have played all night!”
The first thing most viewers notice about the
concert is how almost shockingly amateur the conditions are considering
this is a show in a large facility for the biggest entertainment
phenomenon going. As the Beatles were playing in a boxing ring, they
needed to rotate their instruments every few minutes, so that each
section of the audience had at least one chance to see the group
head-on. Despite their status as kings of the hill, there wasn’t a big
crew of roadies on hand to do the heavy lifting; they had to do some of
the lugging of mikes around themselves, Ringo tugging his drums around
the circle on a large, revolving platform all on his own at times.
(“The man told us to keep movin’ round, y’see, so . . . we’re keepin’
movin’ ” states McCartney, almost apologetically and begrudgingly, into
the mike at one point.) If there was a sound check done before the band
came on, it’s certainly not evident. For when the boys finally launched
into “Roll Over Beethoven” after a few tense minutes of tuning up and
getting everything in place, George Harrison’s lead vocal could hardly
be heard due to an apparent malfunctioning microphone, though he coolly
moved over a few steps to a better one near the end of the first verse
without breaking a sweat or missing a beat.
In spite of the handicaps, the Beatles played with
tremendous energy. If that meant that many of the songs got sped up a
tad—and, in the cases of “Please Please Me” and “Till There Was You”
more than a tad—they certainly didn’t let it affect their playing or
their vocals, which are amazingly spot-on, even in the complex
three-part harmonies of “This Boy” (itself a challenge in this
environment, where ballads couldn’t combat the audience noise with as
much volume as the rockers). Here, too, is the only place where you get
to hear an entire 12-song set from their first American visit, as
opposed to the piecemeal extracts doled out over the course of their
three Ed Sullivan programs.
And what a set it is, including all four of their first British
chart-topping singles, three of which were riding high on the American
hit parade at the moment; “All My Loving,” the best of the non-45
originals from Meet the Beatles,
then resting at No. 1 on the LP charts; “I Saw Her Standing There,” the
B-side of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and a big hit under its own steam;
another ballad with “Till There Was You,” which like “This Boy” helped
enormously in varying the pace; and the all-out rockers of “Roll Over
Beethoven,” “I Wanna Be Your Man,” and “Twist and Shout.” Too, you get
to hear all four of the Beatles on lead vocals, not just Lennon and
McCartney, with Ringo Starr taking his turn for “I Wanna Be Your Man,”
though his bum mike unfortunately made his singing all but inaudible.
Entertaining in their own right are the constant
cutaways to the reactions of the crowd, from the proud moms escorting
their teenage daughters to one 13-year-old-looking boy in a mock
Beatles collarless suit, grinning ear to ear, delightedly sporting what
might have been the first American Beatle haircut ever caught on film.
Also amusing is the band’s own between-song patter, with their onstage
personas already set: McCartney Mr. Smooth as the master of ceremonies,
Lennon threatening to lapse into comic bad taste with his mock-spastic
clapping. Paul does get off a line worthy of Lennon when introducing
“Please Please Me,” though: “This song was released in America, it
didn’t do anything. It was released later again, and . . . well, it’s
doing something, you know?” (Even Lennon laughed hard at that.)
While they were playing the songs they rarely looked
more animated, Ringo shaking his head like mad behind the drums, Paul
bouncing up and down with joy, and even the less habitually ebullient
John and George unable to contain their smiles or jiggling dance steps.
Some highlights: the way the audience spontaneously erupts into screams
when Lennon hits the anguished high note at the end of “This Boy”;
McCartney yelping to kick off the instrumental break to “All My
Loving,” he and Harrison quick-stepping back to the mikes at just the
right moment to resume the vocal; the nearly-out-of-tune instrumental
intro to “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” negated by the almost raw
grittiness with which they lean into the riffs; Paul taking care to
acknowledge the Isley Brothers in his spoken preface for “Twist and
Shout”; and Paul and George singing some of their backup lines in the
wrong order during the same tune. Alas, in the original film you don’t
get to hear or see the last half of “Twist and Shout” or anything from
the finale, “Long Tall Sally.” (The appearance of “Long Tall Sally” on
the electronic press kit for the Anthology
project in 1995, however, helped lead to confirmation that the
entire concert videotape, complete with the full “Twist and Shout,”
does exist at Apple.)
Do you really miss a lot of the original film—even
besides the missing half of “Twist and Shout” and entirety of “Long
Tall Sally”—if you opt for Passport’s The
Beatles in Washington D.C., February 11, 1964 DVD? Not
really—only “Twist and Shout,” “This Boy,” and “All My Loving” are
missing, though all of those are great songs and performances. And if
you want the entire film as originally telecast on closed-circuit TV,
it’s on the not-wholly-kosher-looking DVD compilation Beatles Around the World, complete
with the original overexcited theatrical trailer. That trailer,
incidentally, is most amusing for a simulated conversation between a
teenage boy and his date, part of whose hilariously dated hipster lingo
follows:
Boy: “ Like, wow, the Beatles! Aren’t they the swingin’, livin’ end!
You dig, chick?”
Girl: “I dig, Chuck!”
Boy: “That’s one scene I gotta make!”
Girl: “Me too, Chuck!”
Boy: “Great! We’ll make it together! . . . Chick, you got the date!
I’ll borrow wheels, and we’ll go girl go!”
Girl: “Crazy!”
However, you can tell Beatles Around the World is a “gray
market” release, in spite of it sneaking into some wholly above-board
retail outlets, by the absence of chapter markers for each individual
song (which are usually standard in commercial concert DVDs), as well
as somewhat iffy transfer quality. The original film—sound and image
cleaned up as much as current technology allows, with the missing
one-and-a-half songs from the end added, if available—is another to add
to the list of Beatles videos that should be released in their
entirety, the way they were meant to be seen.
February 16, 1964
US television program The Ed Sullivan Show (rehearsal, not broadcast)
Deauville Hotel, Miami Beach
She Loves You
This Boy
All My Loving
I Saw Her Standing There
From Me to You
I Want to Hold Your Hand
The Beatles’ three 1964 Ed
Sullivan Show appearances—taped on February 7 (in New York) and
February 16 (in Miami)—were not only superb performances, but
monumental milestones of popular culture. All of their 1964 clips, as
well as their August 1965 Ed Sullivan
spot, have been officially released on the two-DVD set The Four Historic Ed Sullivan Shows
Featuring the Beatles. This also includes the entire episodes,
multiple fellow guests and commercials intact, should you want to
experience or revisit them as they were originally broadcast. It’s an
essential video document for any committed Beatles fan.
It’s not so well known, however, that yet more Ed Sullivan footage exists that was
never broadcast. Prior to the live broadcast from Miami on the evening
of February 16, the Beatles did a dress rehearsal of the same six
numbers used in the final show. So these clips, naturally, are similar
to what you see in the February 16 Ed
Sullivan episode, except that the sound and image are worse. But
it’s hardly a waste of time—the sound and image are still decent, the
performances are just as spirited as the broadcast version, and there
are some amusing technical foul-ups. Even considering that network
television was far less slick in 1964 than it is today, it’s still
surprising to see a mike set up at such a low height that John (to his
visible chagrin) almost has to squat to sing into it during “She Loves
You.” The problem is not satisfactorily fixed during the dress
rehearsal, and what’s worse, Paul’s vocal mike gives out entirely for
the first part of “I Saw Her Standing There,” leaving John’s harmony as
the sole singing to be heard. John’s mike, too, remains considerably
louder than Paul’s for the rest of the show.
Perhaps knowing it was a dress rehearsal, John seems
to be taking more liberties than usual during the between-song patter,
slurring, “Shut up while he’s talkin’!” when Paul’s preamble to “I Want
to Hold Your Hand” is interrupted by screams. Then comes the usual
Lennon cripple imitations (conspicuously not attempted in the live set
that was broadcast later that day), as McCartney urges the audience to
clap their hands and stamp their feet. Paul even shoots John a
(scripted?) dirty look at one point, adding a disapproving shake of the
head to the audience. But the Beatles still look like they’re enjoying
themselves mightily through all the snafus, and none of their clowning
changes Ed Sullivan’s glowing assessment of the foursome as “four of
the nicest youngsters we’ve ever had on our stage” at the set’s finish.
There's much more on the unreleased
music
of the Beatles, from all phases of their career, in The
Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film.
unless otherwise specified.
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