Karl Puschmann: Does Martin Scorsese’s new doco capture the fever of Beatlemania?

It took two weeks for The Beatles to conquer America, and a new documentary promises to take you along for the ride. Produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by David Tedeschi, does Beatles ‘64 do their impact justice? Karl Puschmann watches it to find out.
A mop-topped Paul McCartney has just been asked in earnest what his group The Beatles means to Western culture. It is 1964 and The Beatles have spent the previous 10 or so days conquering America so thoroughly that they have transcended from band to phenomenon.
Hordes of mostly female teenage fans have laid siege to their hotels, at each of their four shows they’ve been deafened by uncontrollable primal screams of excitement and teenage lust, and each day they’ve heard themselves on the radio and seen themselves in newspapers and on television.
The band had gone to America to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, as well as play a gig at New York’s famed Carnegie Hall. Documenting their two-week visit were filmmakers Albert and David Maysles, who had been commissioned to make a documentary called What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. by TV network NBC.
It is their ever-present and remarkable footage that makes up the bulk of the Martin Scorsese-produced documentary, The Beatles ‘64, which begins streaming today on Disney+.
Along with almost 20 minutes of never-before-seen footage, there are new interviews with McCartney and Starr and archival interviews with Lennon and Harrison. But the Maysles brothers didn’t just chronicle the Beatles. They also frequently ventured into the screaming hordes on the street to get the perspective of both the Beatles fans and the naysayers who were often either in authority positions or simply sick of the sight of them.
The Beatles ‘64 also goes to the people, interviewing those who were there, either in the crowds camped outside The Beatles’ hotel, in the audience at their shows or hanging out with them in their pockets of downtime. This includes regular folks as well as famous faces like David Lynch, who was surreally in the audience at their Washington gig, and the late Ronnie Spector, who smuggled the band out of their New York hotel and took them to Harlem to get a bite to eat before hitting the club. It was a rare moment of anonymity for the group as “everybody thought they were Spanish dorks!” she recalls, laughing.
The documentary is not as vital and eye-opening as Disney+’s other doco, Peter Jackson’s eight-hour epic The Beatles: Get Back, but The Beatles ‘64 is a fascinating and unguarded record of life inside a historic and world-changing cultural event.
Not that anyone at the time knew it. Yes, the Beatles were well on their way to becoming bigger than Jesus, but nobody could have foretold the seismic impact on pop music and pop culture these four “scruffy-haired” lads would quickly have. Nobody except that one astute journalist who asked McCartney what the group meant to the popular culture.
Up until that moment, McCartney and his bandmates John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr had charmed the American press with their wise-cracking Liverpudlian wit and snappy zings. A later archival interview has Harrison cheerfully brushing off the group’s effortless charisma by noting that everyone in Liverpool fancied themselves a comedian.
The Beatles ‘64 highlights their charm and their good looks – it’s easy to understand why a generation swooned, but it also proves they could rock around the clock with the best of them. The old black-and-white footage has been cleaned up and polished in stunning 4K resolution and the recording has been completely remastered by Giles Martin, son of their long-term record producer Sir George Martin, and the man responsible for The Beatles remasters over the last 20 years.
These legendary performances now look and sound absolutely incredible, as the band tears through their set with a joyful bonhomie and an effortless mastery honed through years of playing in raucous Hamburg clubs.
Over 70 million people tuned into The Ed Sullivan Show to watch their performances. Beatlemania, infectious and catchy, had well and truly arrived. Inside the eye of the storm, a strange normality as the four wide-eyed friends goof around having the time of their lives while the world freaks out around them.
The footage shows them always in good spirits and joking around. Except during one train journey where McCartney sits quietly while the others banter and jape. When the camera zooms in on him, he simply says, “I’m just not in a laughing mood.”
Later, a journalist asks him what The Beatles mean to Western culture, causing him to splutter in response, “Culture?”
“It’s not culture,” he states. “It’s a good laugh.”
Beatles ‘64 is streaming on Disney+ from Friday, November 29.
Karl Puschmann is an entertainment columnist for the Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.