Sixty years after the Beatles’s first U.S. visit, the rock band still holds Billboard’s record for most No.1 songs on the Hot 100 chart and the record for most No.1 albums (19) in the history of Billboard’s tracking.
And sixty years later, there is still behind-the-scenes footage of that two-week visit in February 1964 that has not been widely seen. Now, it is available on Disney+. The documentary Beatles ’64, produced by Martin Scorsese, restores rare footage of the rock stars Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, and their adoring—screaming—fans, which was filmed by documentarians Albert and David Maysles.
Much of the rarely seen footage involves the Beatles relaxing in between a frenetic schedule of radio, TV, and concert appearances. Viewers will see McCartney feeding seagulls bread out a window, and Harrison drinking a glass of water and strumming on a guitar. In one bit, Harrison is lying in the overhead compartment of a train.
“It’s so new to them, this level of success. They love it,” says Beatles ’64 Director David Tedeschi. “They’re having the time of their lives because they’ve dreamed about this for many years.”
Filming coincided with the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibit of candids that McCartney took on a camera during the ‘64 U.S. visit, so Tedeschi was able to talk to the rock star and get a behind-the-scenes look at the show. McCartney has lots of stories to tell in his interview. He talks about writing “She Loves You” at his Liverpool home with Lennon, and his father arguing that the famous line “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah” should be a more polite “she loves you yes, yes, yes.”
A lot of the never-before-seen footage in Beatles ’64 includes interviews with fans waiting outside in the freezing cold to try and catch a glimpse of the rock stars. Screaming fans were a fixture of the Beatles’ visit, and these interviews show just how fanatical they were. One talks about going to the Plaza hotel and buying a piece of towel that the Beatles were said to have used. Another got an engineer at Shea Stadium to cut off the seat where he sat so he could take it home as a souvenir.
The fans were following the Beatles everywhere they went. In an interview, Ronnie Spector, the lead singer of the Ronettes, explains how she helped the group escape from the Plaza hotel to Harlem in a limousine. They ate great food and got to dance. “They loved it because nobody recognized them, nobody paid them any attention,” Spector says in the documentary.
Tedeschi found it revealing to see the Beatles—professional performers—a little bit uncomfortable with all of the publicity in this newly restored footage, like one scene in which Lennon is asking cameramen why they are filming because he thought they were doing a radio segment. It’s a very human moment.
“When they were on the plane, amongst themselves, they worried that nobody would be at the airport,” Tedeschi explains, “and although they had two number-one hits, they had no idea that they would become a phenomenon.”
