Oscar-winning director Ron Howard reveals why The Beatles still matter

BEFORE he was Richie Cunningham, before he was an Oscar-winning director, Ron Howard was a huge Beatles fan who wanted a mop-top wig.

Why did you want to make this documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week — The Touring Years?

I did a documentary about Jay Z’s music festival called Made in America and I really enjoyed that experience. It was creative and interesting and I was given an opportunity to share what I learned and apply my perspective and sensibility to it.

I went into this film with a similar point of view — it was almost a creative lark.

I thought, ‘Well that will be fun — I’ll get to meet Sir Paul and Ringo and Olivia and Yoko — it will be a blast’.

But the moment it was announced there was so much intensity around it — retweets and hits on the internet and calls and interviews and people coming up to me on the street saying, ‘I hear you’re doing it — that’s our Beatles, what’s it going to be like?’.

I immediately realised that doing a Beatles documentary was, in fact, serious business and that I had a lot to live up to.

WHAT’S ON AT THE MOVIES: EVERY FILM RATED

LEIGH PAATSCH REVIEWS EIGHT DAYS A WEEK — THE TOURING YEARS

Did you have reservations about taking on the biggest band in history and one about whom so much has been written and put on film?

I did — and then I didn’t. I feel the pressure and the responsibility in terms of relating their story.

There were also frustrations, which I knew I would face; there is so much story to be told that I had to make a lot of critical decisions, just as with Apollo 13or A Beautiful Mind or Rushor any other movie based on real events.

As you delve into them there is so much complexity. With The Beatles you can quadruple that because their journey was so unique and tremendous.

But at the end of the day I thought as a storyteller it was simply one of the great stories I would ever have an opportunity to explore and I found it irresistible.

What level of Beatles fan were you?

I’m not encyclopaedic about The Beatles. I was a fan going back to their appearance on
The Ed Sullivan Show. That was in February and my birthday is March 1, so by then all I wanted in the worldwas a Beatle wig and Beatle boots for my 10th birthday.

They couldn’t find me any boots — or they were too expensive, I never got the true story — but I did get a wig. So I followed their music and always appreciated it.

I was actually going at this in a very similar way to any of these projects based on real events. I knew a hell of a lot more about The Beatles than I knew about Formula One or going to the moon or the whaling industry in the 1820s, but nonetheless I made it a journey of exploration.

I go into these things with a kind of innocence and a curiosity and as my knowledge deepens and broadens it’s about sharing that with the audience.

What was it about The Beatles that spoke to you as a nine-year-old?

They were absolutely unique. When you see some of those early performances, which I lead the movie off with just to remind everyone how incredibly good they were — how tight they were, how explosive they were, how magnetic and engaging they were — I was swept up by that. The whole package, the look, the sound, the energy, the girls going crazy, all of it.

In Southern California where I was living and working on the Andy Griffith Show as a kid actor, the DJs were trying to create a pitched battle between Beatles fans and Beach Boys fans. As I have come to experience throughout my life, I am not somebody who naturally chooses sides. I like both groups — so kill me!

The Beatles had a special bond that transcended into their music. A scene from Ron Howard’s documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week — The Touring Years. Picture: Supplied

The passion for all things Beatles is undiminished more than 50 years later. What’s
the enduring appeal?

It’s the quality. The writing is so extraordinary and I wanted to share and underscore that.

With John and Paul and later on what George wrote and the contribution Ringo made, it’s great work. And it’s not just a handful of songs — it’s dozens and dozens of songs.

In fact, almost any mood you are in you can find at least a couple of great Beatles songs that will suit that mood and speak to you very directly. That’s a tribute not to haircuts, cuteness and glibness, that’s a tribute to artistry.

The Fab Three are Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr with The Beatles: Eight Days A Week — The Touring Years. Picture: Supplied

That level of fame and celebrity hadn’t really been experienced before and here it was happening to four young guys from Liverpool. You have described The Beatles’ early journey as ‘a survival story’ — how so?

The madness of Beatlemania was exhausting to say the least and there was always the possibility of something disastrous happening to somebody — and sometimes it did in the audiences.

But there is also the emotional gauntlet they had to go through. At that age, with their backgrounds and at that time in our society, it’s important to understand what that journey was like for them as a unit and as a brotherhood but also as individuals.

Their bond comes through very clearly in the film. Though there were only four people in the world who truly knew what it was like to be a Beatle, do you feel you got a sense of it?

Definitely. More so than I expected. Also, I didn’t really understand the measure of the personal and artistic integrity until I worked on the movie and had a chance to talk with Paul and Ringo in a couple of interviews.

I could see that the choices they made — (for instance) moral decisions to not play to segregated audiences, which was groundbreaking, earth-shattering in America, yet to them it was simple logic — they held to their personal and creative principles. That speaks to why they have endured; there is an integrity to the work that you have to respect and love.

The Beatles created a sound with lyrics that still reverberates and strike a cord with people today. Picture: Supplied

Had you met any of The Beatles before making this film?

I met Paul at the Academy Awards the night I won for A Beautiful Mind. That was very brief but I know a lot of people who know him and spoke very highly of him ... and I now concur after our three or four times together.

Ringo wandered by with Keith Moon and crashed the set of Happy Days— they weren’t in a particular state of being that would allow them to remember it very well. Ringo is a little vague on it, but he does know he was there.

And I met John Lennon at one point because his son Julian was a Fonzie fan — so when John was living in LA he came by to visit us. That was a thrill.

I never got to meet George, but I know so many people, including Niki Lauda, who just adored that man because he loved Formula One; he was a serious, serious fan. George was kind of a renaissance man between the movie business, music, horticulture, the houses he restored and his love of motorsport.

A scene from the film The Beatles: Eight Days a Week — The Touring Years. Picture: Supplied / StudioCanal

SEETHE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK — THE TOURING YEARS OPENS TOMORROW. IN CINEMAS FOR ONE WEEK ONLY

2016 US Open: famous faces in the crowd

VIEW GALLERY