catalogue FEATURE
Climb aboard the Beatles bandwagon
By A nne Wollenberg
The term “Beatlemania” may have
been an understatement. Widely
believed to be the best-selling musical
act in the world, the “Fab Four”
have set a spate of world records
and picked up a huge list of awards
including seven Grammys and an
Academy Award for “Best Original
Song Score”, for the film “Let It Be”.
In honour of John Lennon’s 70th
birthday on Oct. 9, the company Box
of Vision LLC has teamed up with
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and
Museum to create three authorised
time capsules containing Lennon’s
post-Beatles recordings and fan
contributions. The capsules are being
put together with the co-operation
of the John Lennon Estate and his
wife, Yoko Ono, and will be stored
at three locations including Rock
Hall, Ohio. They will be opened in a
ceremonial presentation in 30 years’
time.
Fans of The Beatles have been
invited to upload birthday wishes,
commentaries, musical performances
of Lennon’s recordings and their
personal thoughts on his legacy, via
the website www.BoxOfVision.com/
TimeCapsule.
“John Lennon’s body of work
is our time capsule,” said Box of
Vision’s Jonathan Polk, who last year
created The Beatles Box of Vision,
a collectable box set of remastered
recordings. “It embodies the ideals
that once fuelled our absolute belief
we could change the world.”
It was Britain’s Britpop movement,
featuring bands such as Suede, Blur,
Oasis and Pulp, that kick-started a
new wave of Beatlemania in the 90s
after a couple of quiet decades. With
their now-ubiquitous presence in
pop culture and home entertainment,
it’s perhaps easy to forget that it has
been 40 years since the band broke
up, not least because they’re still
selling millions of records.
The Beatles’ company, Apple,
remains tight-lipped about its sales
figures; “perhaps, after 30 years of
selling albums by the million, you
begin to lose interest in bragging
about numbers,” said The Guardian’s
head rock and pop critic, Alexis
Petridis, who noted that around
40% of the people who bought
compilation album “1” (31 million)
were aged between 17 and 25 yearsold.
Nowhere Boy
“There seems to be a bottomless
appetite for Beatles material, not
just in Britain, but globally,” Mark
Ellen, Editor of Word Magazine and
previously the co-founder of Q, told
The Guardian. There has certainly
been a steady stream of Beatlesrelated releases on DVD and, in
some cases, Blu-ray, from live concert
footage to documentaries, biopics
and feature films, such as “Nowhere
Boy”, which screened at the closing
day gala of the London Film Festival.
The feature debut of director
Sam Taylor-Wood, the Icon Home
Entertainment title follows John
Lennon, played here by “KickAss” star Aaron Johnson, through
adolescence, the formation of his
first band, The Quarrymen, and the
beginning of The Beatles, and has
been released on DVD and Blu-ray
for both retail and rental.
The Beatles have enjoyed a
successful film career over the years,
from Marx Brothers-esque farce
“A Hard Day’s Night”, released in
1964, to 1965’s “Help!” — a James
Bond-style spoof and the first colour
Beatles film. Both are available on
DVD — unlike 1968 animation
“Yellow Submarine”, which is
currently deleted.
A plethora of Beatles
documentary releases are available
on DVD, covering everything from
the band breaking into America
to the relationship between John
Lennon and Yoko Ono, some
more official than others. These
include “For The Record With Pete
Best”, “The Beatles: The Definitive
Critical Review”, the “Music Box
Biographical Collection”, “Liverpool
– A Magical History Tour”, “The
Long And Winding Road”, “Intimate
Scrapbook”, “Up Close And
Personal” and “From The Beginning
To The End”.
“All Together Now” goes behind
the scenes of The Beatles’ “Love”
album, “The First US Visit”, while
“Magical Mystery Tour Memories”
recalls the making of the cult film
“Magical Mystery Tour”, though the
film itself is not currently available.
The band’s tour manager made “A
Film By Mal Evans”, while their
chauffeur and road manager came up
with “Alf Bicknell’s Beatles Diary”.
Other titles focus on individual
band members, including “George
Harrison – The Dark Horse Years –
1976 to 1992”, “George Harrison
– Beautiful Stranger”, docu-drama
“John and Yoko”, “The US vs. John
Lennon” and Warner Home Video’s
“Imagine”, a collection of more
than 240 hours of film and video
from Lennon’s own private archives.
Live shows range from “Live In
The USA” and “Live at Shea” to
“Concert For George,” a tribute to
George Harrison.
Think of any period in Beatles
history and there will be a DVD to
cover it, such as “From Love Me
Do To Let It Be”, “From Liverpool
To San Francisco – 1963-1969”,
“The Beatles – Here, There And
30
Everywhere 63-70”, a collection of
footage taken from the ITV archive
and “Archival Treasures: 19641971”. “Tony Palmer – All My
Loving” examines the 1960s music
scene and features footage of The
Beatles and other acts such as Pink
Floyd and The Who, and EMI’s
“The Beatles: Destination Hamburg”
was released to mark the 45th
anniversary of the band returning
from Hamburg to sign up to EMI
Records in 1962.
EMI also released “The Beatles
Anthology”, a deluxe eight-part
set covering the band’s complete
history, with 10 hours of footage
from interviews, concerts, studio
sessions, home movies and more.
Included with the DVD release is a
bonus disc containing 80 minutes of
rare footage, including a 46-minute
performance that Paul McCartney,
George Harrison and Ringo Starr
recorded in the summer of 1994.
Then there are fictionalised
documentaries, such as “The Hours
And Times”, a fictionalised take
on a trip John Lennon and The
Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein made
to Barcelona in 1963. Ian Hart’s
acclaimed performance as John
Lennon led to his reprising the role in
“Backbeat”, which is also currently
deleted.
“Monty Python” star Eric
Idle wrote and co-directed the
mockumentary “The Rutles – All
You Need Is Cash”, a forerunner to
“Spinal Tap”.
“This is spoofing done properly,”
said The Guardian’s Phelim O’Neill
of Second Sight’s 30th-anniversary
DVD release, “with love, attention
and, here’s the key, loads of gags.”
George Harrison also saw success
as a film producer: he formed
HandMade Films to finance “Monty
Python’s The Life Of Brian”, now
available on DVD and Blu-ray, and
worked on titles including “Time
Bandits” and “Withnail And I”.
The comedy “Walk Hard – The
Dewey Cox Story”, out on both
Blu-ray and DVD, even features an
intentionally miscast Beatles quartet
played by the likes of Jack Black and
Paul Rudd.
Also available on DVD and
Blu-ray is “AcrossThe Universe”, a
coming-of-age drama starring Jim
Sturgess, Evan Rachel Wood and
Salma Hayek with a soundtrack of
Beatles songs.