Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr Say New Documentary Jogged Their Memories About Beatlemania Era

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Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr Say New Documentary Jogged Their Memories About Beatlemania Era
BY ABC News Radio
September 3, 2016

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Former Beatles band mates Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr recently came together in Las Vegas to give a rare joint interview with the Los Angeles Times to chat about the upcoming documentary Eight Days a Week — The Touring Years. The Ron Howard-directed film, which gets its theatrical premiere on September 15, focuses on the Fab Four’s career through the band’s final official concert in August 1966.

McCartney and Starr both noted that watching the movie helped jar their recollections of that time period, during which the band was subjected to unprecedented fan hysteria while touring the world.

“The stuff you remember when you see the footage, and the old photographs, it helps,” explained Starr.

Added McCartney, “It jogs all the memories. That’s one of the joys about seeing the film.”

McCartney also told the L.A. Times that the movie reminded him about his band’s strong anti-discrimination stance in the U.S., as the film showed an archival rider revealing that The Beatles refused to play concerts at segregated venues.

“We’d always naturally had an empathy with [civil-rights issues], just because we had loads of black friends and [many of] our [musical] heroes…were black,” Sir Paul noted. “To see in the film that we actually put it in our contracts…we didn’t remember that. I was very impressed with that.”

Howard, who also took part in the interview, told the newspaper that he had two main goals in making the documentary. The first was to honor the group’s dedicated fans, and the second was “to tell a story that would convey to people who really have no idea — I’m thinking of the millennials, I suppose…the intensity of the journey and the impact [The Beatles] had.”

To check out more details about the film, visit TheBeatlesEightDaysaWeek.com.

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