An account of The Beatles during the Hamburg years, their signing with Brian Epstein and their inevitable rise during the early sixties.
Director: Richard Marquand
Stars: Stephen MacKenna, Rod Culbertson, John Altman, Ray Ashcroft.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078865/
Watched online, poor print, very blurry.
11 songs in the Soundtracks. Seemed like more, but plenty were performed more than once.
When I saw Dick Clark as producer, I felt like this would was in good hands. American Bandstand was on air '52-'98 with him as host, and eventually exec producer too. So he has a lot of credibility in RnR.
The music is reproduced by a tribute band called Rain, not the 4 actors playing JPG&R.
I have no idea how accurate this is, nor does it matter to me.
Hamburg was no picnic. The film doesn't really show how they learned from the experience, how they improved themselves, how they improved their writing or developed their style. It's as though they were always good, and just needed to develop a reputation. But they transitioned from covering other hits to making their own, so that might have been interesting to cover in more depth.
Pete Best is credited as contributing to the film (perhaps via a book?), and may have slanted the reason for his ouster as being his popularity with the girls. In the script they say Ringo is a better drummer, Best is too laid back, and when Epstein accuses them of being jealous of the girls calling the band Pete Best and the Beatles, they say a curt "maybe", and send Epstein off to fire Best.
The film ends with their first song on Sullivan in '64.
OK film with good tunes.
Dick Clark Prod., dir. Marquand; 6
