Odd thing about youth. You don't really know what it means until you lose it. It's not that you want to go back in time, it's more that you can recall moments before you realized your personal future had an expiration date.
I thought about that while watching Beatles '64, a documentary made from footage shot by two great documentarians, the late Albert and David Maysles for What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A., a documentary released about nine months after the Beatles tour.
Produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by David Tedeschi, who worked with Scorsese on George Harrison: Living in the Material World, '64 reworks some of the Maysles footage, bringing present-tense immediacy to a bygone moment, along with a bit of reflection and improved sound.
The Beatles arrived in the US about two and a half moths after JFK's murder. I believe it was John Lennon who later said that the Beatles helped jolt the country out of its post-assassination gloom. Frank Sinatra and Elvis were followed by plenty of screaming teenage girls, but the Beatles reinvigorated fan frenzy.
In the documentary, the Beatles bring their long hair and impudent charm to New York, Washington, and Miami. Their songs don't so much plumb depths as they burst with what felt like a new kind of energy. It was music with exclamation points. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Beatles '64 also chronicles a time before the US was deeply involved in Vietnam, and, in retrospect, it seems like it might have been the last good time before young Americans began dying in a country few of them had ever heard of.
The documentary includes plenty of shots of the Beatles doing what they seemed to do so well, goof around, often in a posh suite at the Plaza. Rockers' having fun? That's the way it was, maybe because fame had yet to exhaust John, Paul, Ringo, and George.
Of course, we see the landmark appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and the Beatles' concert at Carnegie Hall, but the Beatles had yet to push the musical envelope as far as they would. It would take two years for the Beatles to release Revolver, the album that featured Eleanor Rigby, Yellow Submarine, and Good Day Sunshine. It would be three years until St. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and six years before the Beatles broke up.
Yes, there are talking heads, David Lynch, Jamie Bernstein, the late conductor's daughter, and Smokey Robinson of the Miracles among them. Paul McCartney, another of the film's producers, adds perspective. So does Ringo. Both are in their 80s.
The Beatles excitement about visiting the US, an enthusiasm amply reciprocated by their fans, buoys this infectiously lively doc. Ordinary women -- long past their teens -- still glow when recalling their Beatles' ardor.
That's a key: Beatles '64 fires a shot of youthful exuberance. No, it doesn't last, but it's still possible to remember how it felt.
Beatles '64 will be available on Disney+ beginning on Nov. 29.
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