The Beatles: From Liverpool to San Francisco is a 2005 documentary that is now available on streaming service Qello.
The documentary explores the career of The Beatles, including their daily busy schedules and the rise of Beatlemania. Viewers can see the actual calendar events of the band beginning in autumn 1963, when they had either a TV show, live concert or studio recording to take care of on a daily basis – even before their appeal had made it to the United States.
In fact, the program begins with an explanation of how each of The Beatles grew up in varied, but mostly ordinary, circumstances in Liverpool, pointing out that they were a sensation as a group, not individually. The Beatles: From Liverpool to San Francisco features a lot of footage of fans going crazy over the Fab Four, in true Beatlemania fashion, both in Europe and the United States.
There are plenty of old interviews with The Beatles included in the 2005 documentary, where they talk about subjects like their fans, their first U.S. tour and their influence on the world. As fans might expect, the four musicians make a lot of jokes during their interviews. In one instance, an interviewer mentions to The Beatles that some people in the United States thought the group’s hairstyles were “un-American.” To that, John Lennon replies that The Beatles are, in fact, not from America, making it an accurate statement.
It wasn’t all good news for The Beatles from the beginning of their career – the group also had issues with management and making money. They realized that their deal with EMI was preventing them from earning as much as they deserved, with the label only giving the band a small fraction of the huge sales that each of their records made.
Within a year of The Beatles first making waves on the music scene, they began making films as well. They made their mock documentary, A Hard Day’s Night, in 1964, beginning their careers as movie stars in addition to being rock stars.
The Beatles: From Liverpool to San Francisco runs a little less than an hour long, so if you’re interested in seeing footage of the band’s rise to fame in the early and mid-1960s, as well as learning more about the worldview at that time and how it affected The Beatles, check out the documentary on Qello.
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