I just finished watching Ron Howard's incomparable film, "Eight Days A Week". By the time I'd reached the very final credits which had a voice over of the Four Beatles doing a little note to the fans at the end of 1963, I could do nothing but burst into tears.
Do you remember Beatle bubble gum trading cards? My girl friends and I played with them in 1965-66. There was Beatle magazine, which we were mad for. I was 10 in 1966. I recall telling someone that 10 was the best year, that I loved being 10 years old. Part of that had to do with the Beatles. We were deeply infatuated for Paul and john were our first loves.
As I watched the fpour grow up in the film footage so artfully interspersed with interviews of some of my favorite people who also loved them, I felt keenly again my own youth as well. In those years we were all so young, and we loved love. Idealism was taking hold in a visceral way for me. I was forming myself in relation to the world.
The movie never went further than their last rooftop concert in London, before they disbanded as a group. How wise of Ron Howard, how terribly, sadly wise. For what happened later to John and George is a sickening commentary on mass culture and the collateral damage of fame.
But, back to my tears, for my first loves, for the guys who refused to play to a segregated audience in the 1965 American South. To the guys who grew their hair and gave a generation of men the invitation to break out. To the young men who smiled with such authentic good will and treated their fans with courtesy and easy humor.
My gut reactions to the film - still teary eyed. Not sure what to do next. Not sure where that love and art has gone, not recognizing the world I thought it was when I was 10.
