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PBS presents the U.S. broadcast premiere of Academy Award®-winner Ron Howard’s authorized and highly acclaimed Emmy® Award and GRAMMY Award®-winning documentary film about The Beatles’ phenomenal early career.
“The Beatles: Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years” is based on the first part of The Beatles’ career (1962-1966) – the period in which they toured and captured the world’s acclaim.
The film explores how John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr came together to become this extraordinary phenomenon, “The Beatles.”
It reveals their inner workings – how they made decisions, created their music and built their collective career together – all the while, exploring The Beatles’ extraordinary and unique musical gifts and their remarkable, complementary personalities.
The film focuses on the time period from the early Beatles’ journey in the days of The Cavern Club in Liverpool to their last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1966.
The Beatles began touring Europe in late 1963, after an extraordinary arrival on the British scene in 1961 and ‘62.
However, it was their much-heralded ED SULLIVAN SHOW appearance on Feb. 9, 1964, that caused The Beatles’ popularity to explode.
By June, the band had commenced their first world tour, and continued on a relentless schedule for two subsequent years.
By the time the band stopped touring in August of 1966, they had performed 166 concerts in 15 countries and 90 cities around the world.
The cultural phenomenon their touring helped create, known as “Beatlemania,” was something the world had never seen before and laid the foundation for the globalization of culture.
The film features rare and never-before-seen archival footage of shows and interviews, plus new interviews with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and numerous prominent observers.
It captures the exhilaration of The Beatles’ phenomenal rise to fame as well as the toll it eventually took on the band’s members, prompting them to stop touring and devote their prodigious musical talents to their groundbreaking studio recordings.
CREDITS:
Produced with the full cooperation of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison. White Horse Pictures’ GRAMMY Award®-winning Nigel Sinclair, Scott Pascucci and Academy Award®-winner and Emmy® Award-winner Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment are producers with Ron Howard. Apple Corps Ltd.’s Jeff Jones and Jonathan Clyde are executive producers, along with Imagine’s Michael Rosenberg and White Horse’s Guy East and Nicholas Ferrall.
