Beatles '64Offers Intimate Look at How the Fabs Helped America Heal from JFK Assassination (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

George Harrison, Ringo Starr, John Lenbon, and Paul Mccartney arriving at JFK airport in 1964.Photo:Apple Corps, Ltd.

Apple Corps, Ltd.

That was, of course, where the Fab Four first made landfall on Feb. 7, 1964. The hero’s welcome they received at Kennedy International Airport would echo throughout the city, country and ultimately the world. It’s only fitting that the Nov. 24 premiere ofBeatles ‘64was held in the heart of the Big Apple. A-listers like Emma Stone, Chris Rock, James Taylor, and Elvis Costello were on hand at Manhattan’s recently completed Hudson Square Theater to celebrate alongside Olivia Harrison, Sean Ono Lennon, andan ebullient Paul McCartney. Ethan Hawke moderated a post-screening Q&A with the director and Scorsese, who recalled how hearing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” for the first time on his morning walk to NYU’s Washington Square College left him so mesmerized that he was late to class.

Olivia Harrison, Martin Scorsese, Sir Paul McCartney, David Tedeschi and Sean Lennon attend the Beatles ‘64 Premiere at Hudson Square Theater on Nov. 24, 2024 in New York City.Kevin Mazur/Getty

Kevin Mazur/Getty

LikeGet Back, Tesceschi’s film draws from newly unearthed footage to focus on a brief yet pivotal juncture in the Beatles’ career. In this case, it’s their maiden voyage to America, the two week sojourn when they managed to cram in their generation-defining debut onThe Ed Sullivan Show(plus twomoreappearances!), their first U.S. concert in Washington, a gig at New York’s prestigious Carnegie Hall, and a jaunt to Miami to swim, sail and have aquick meet-and-greet with Muhammad Ali.

The Beatles from ‘Beatles ‘64’.Apple Corps, Ltd.

“Albert sent us all the footage in the 1980s,” says Jonathan Clyde, an executive at the Beatles’ Apple Corps organization and one of the producers ofBeatles ‘64. “It was just hundreds and hundreds of cans of film. There were work prints and outtakes. It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle and we had never really addressed what to do with it.” When the production ofGet Backwas in its final stages, Peter Jackson volunteered to use the same state-of-the-art film restoration technology he’d employed on that project to give the Maysles material a 4K polish. “They spent three years working on it,” Clyde adds. “At that point there was no intent to do anything with the footage. Then the internal discussion started. It was Olivia Harrison, who’d worked with Marty and David before [on 2011’sGeorge Harrison: Living in the Material World], who suggested we speak to them. Paul, Sean and Ringo completely agreed, and that’s how it started.”

While the film features new interviews with the surviving Beatles, as well as fans, artists and other notables, the heart ofBeatles ‘64is the Maysles footage. The material is unique for presenting the momentsimmediately before and after the iconic scenes enshrined in history books. We’ve seen the Beatles make theirEd Sullivandebut an endless number of times, but few have witnessed the raucous afterparty where the band dances and flirts with club-goers at Times Square’s hotspot du jour, The Peppermint Lounge. Their first American press conference at JFK’s arrivals hall is unforgettable for their witty one-liners. (Reporter: “Can you please sing something?” John: “No, we need money first!” Reporter: “Why does your music please people?” John: “If we knew we’d form another group and be managers.”) But the sight of the band watching themselves on television later that night and laughing at their own jokes is just as charming as the banter.

The Beatles answer questions for newsmen and journalists at a press conference upon their arrival in New York on Feb. 7, 1964.Daily Mirror/Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty

Daily Mirror/Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty

“What’s your ambition?" one reporter yells at the press conference. George Harrison’s reply is telling: “To go to America.” This is as big as they ever dreamed, and the looks on their faces can only be described as giddy. “They just cannot believe what is happening to them,” Clyde observes. It’s striking just how new they are to being the most famous people on the planet, and their awe is touching. Transistor radios are practically glued to their ears, as if they can’t get over the fact that their music is being played on American networks. They are the first British musicians to make a mark in the birthplace of rock. As one of their songs pours out of McCartney’s radio speaker for what was likely the 50th time that day, he stares right into the camera and lets out a gleeful “I love this!” Ringo IDs himself on one radio interview as “Ringo from the Beatles” — surely the last time he’d ever feel the need to offer that qualifying suffix.

Lennon becomes almost childlike upon hearing his voice through headphones. The mere act of seeing and hearing themselves was still novel. The endlessly prodding lenses and microphones are nearly never treated like the intrusion that they clearly are. Only once does Paul make a run for it — albeit comically, and just to the end of the hallway. After all, there’s nowhere for him to go.

Paul McCartney greets a fan outside his limo, February 1964.Apple Corps, Ltd.

The scene is a rare look at what John Lennon later referred to as “the eye of the hurricane” — the calm focal point around which the mayhem revolves. “The craziness was going on in the world,” says Harrison in an archival clip. “In the band, we were kind of normal and the rest of the world was crazy.” The Beatles were arguably the most documented people in the world for a handful of years in the mid ‘60s, but seldom were the cameras pointed outward. The Maysles — and McCartney,whose Pentax snaps were recently published and exhibited in New York this year— capture the madness unfolding before their eyes.

George Harrison in ‘Beatles ‘64’.Apple Corps, Ltd.

Fans chase the Beatles’ limo outside the Plaza Hotel, February 1964.Judd Mehlman/NY Daily News Archive via Getty

Judd Mehlman/NY Daily News Archive via Getty

The fact that the Maysles spent so much film stock on these young women sets them apart from most other adults, who were all too happy to dismiss the whole thing as hormonal hysteria, no different than the silliness surrounding Presley or Sinatra in prior decades. But the Maysles recognized that this raw display of emotion was worthy of respect and even reverence. Tedeschi tracked down a handful of these pioneering Beatlemaniacs, many of whom still struggled to articulate the emotions behind these screams even after 60 years of processing. “It was like a crazy love,” Vickie Brenna-Costa, the linen purchaser, reflects in the film. “I can’t really understand it now. But then it was natural.”

Fans of the Beatles in February 1964.Smith/Daily Herald/Mirrorpix via Getty

Smith/Daily Herald/Mirrorpix via Getty

By showcasing how the band impacted fans on a non-musical level,Beatles ‘64both accentuates their power as a cultural force that transcends songs and also helps the message resonate more deeply for those of us who didn’t follow their path to rockstar glory. The connection with the Beatles isn’t just musician-to-musician, or boy-to-girl. They’re for everyone, forever and always.

The mania reached critical mass on Feb. 9 when the Beatles made their hyperbole-proof debut onThe Ed Sullivan Show. Their appearance drew upwards of 73 million viewers, making it the most-watched television event to date. “It’s very hard to imagine today what it was like in terms of media in 1964,” Tedeschi explains. “I think New York probably had five television channels, and that was more than anywhere else in the country.” The Maysles’ cameras were barred from entering CBS studios, but they ultimately captured something far more precious: some of the only known footage of a family witnessing this oft-recalled cultural turning point in real-time.

The Beatles were aware of their inadvertent (and uneasy) role as de facto ambassadors of Black music to White America. Lennon referenced it when recalling the initial U.S. resistance. “People have always been trying to stamp out rock ‘n’ roll since it started,” he says in a 1975 interview clip included in the doc. “I always thought that it’s because it came from Black music and the words had a lot of double entendre in the early days. It was all this ‘our nice White kids are gonna go crazy moving their bodies.’ The music got to your body. The Beatles just carried it a bit further [and] made it a bit more White, even more than Elvis did because we were English.”

Fans at the Beatles’ first concert in the United States on Feb. 11, 1964 at the Coliseum in Washington.Trikosko/Library of Congress/Interim Archives/Getty

Trikosko/Library of Congress/Interim Archives/Getty

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

As the man (Billy Joel, actually) once said, perhaps it’s best not to dissect something that’s still alive. And, inexplicably, the Beatles phenomenon continues to endure.“One of the big surprises of the film for me was how much fans from 1964 continue to love the music,” says Tedeschi. “Jamie Bernstein says that whenever Beatles songs come on, she has to stop what she’s doing because it goes straight into her heart and transports her back to that place inside of herself where the Beatles live.”

The “why” is a magical mystery. Intellectualizing aside, the explanation that will probably feel the most accurate to fans is a brief one buried midway through the movie. A reporter asks one of the girls outside the Plaza, “What do you like about the Beatles?” Her answer, delivered in a feral caterwaul that distorts the tape, is simple:“EVERYTHING!”

That’s the second greatest interview inBeatles ‘64. The best occurs during a quiet moment on the train ride from New York to their Washington gig. A reporter asks McCartney what he thinks the Beatles’ impact will be on Western culture. It’s possible that his tongue is firmly in cheek, and McCartney seems to take it as such. “Culture?!” he chuckles incredulously. “It’s not culture. It’s a good laugh!” After witnessing the 82-year-old McCartney watch the towering image of his younger self uttering those words at the documentary premiere, it’s tempting to wonder if he’s changed his mind.

source: people.com