Rock 'n' roll: A vital, vibrant force, yesterday and today
A couple of weeks ago, immediately after the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival's screening of Ron Howard's The Beatles: Eight Days a Week -- The Touring Years, my wife, Karen Martin, who was moderating a post-screening discussion of the film, asked the nearly 600 audience members how many of them had seen The Beatles live before they stopped touring after their 1966 concert trek.
Six or eight hands shot up around the room and Karen raised her own -- she'd seen the group at Cleveland's Public Hall in September 1964.
That show, which she says she doesn't remember much about (though she remembers how she dressed in black turtleneck, red blazer, black skirt, leather cap and Beatle boots and, most of all, how she anticipated going), was remarkable for a couple of reasons. First, shortly after The Beatles started playing, teenagers rushed the stage and Police Inspector Carl Bear of the Cleveland Police Department's juvenile division ordered the band back to their dressing room. The show proceeded after a 15-minute delay, during which the crowd presumably calmed down.
After the performance, all rock 'n' roll shows were temporarily banned. Less than two years later The Beatles were back, playing a show at Cleveland Stadium, which was also disrupted by fans who broke through a 4-foot security fence and invaded the field during "Day Tripper." Again the band left the stage, returning 30 minutes later, after police and private security restored order.
That neither of these Cleveland incidents is mentioned in Howard's film is more indicative of the eventfulness of Beatlemania in America than it is of lassitude on the part of the filmmaker. Eight Days a Week is a selective history of The Beatles before they retreated to the studio to make art rock. It's less a comprehensive history than an attempt at time travel. The movie aims to re-create the exuberant shock The Beatles occasioned back when they were just a rock 'n' roll band; to refresh the myth of rock 'n' roll as a delivery system for pure joy.
By: Philip Martin
Source: Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette
