Good morning. Today, a music reporter revisits the documentary that made him fall in love the Beatles, ahead of the film’s 30th-anniversary rerelease.
Meet the Beatles, again
In 1987, when I was a budding teenage rock snob, the checkout lane at my local supermarket was crowded with magazines commemorating the Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” still hyped after 20 years. If I didn’t groan, I at least rolled my eyes. To this Gen X kid, few things were less cool than the Beatles, the musical embodiment of the cultural dominance of my parents’ boomer generation. I preferred the Pixies, Nirvana and whatever else caught my eye on MTV’s “120 Minutes” (though Kurt Cobain’s adoration of John Lennon couldn’t be ignored). Now I am a Fab Four obsessive, consulting a shelf of Beatles-related reference books while I listen to boxed sets of outtakes. The turning point for me was “The Beatles Anthology,” an authorized documentary that was shown over three nights in November 1995. It returns to Disney+ this week, in an expanded and technologically sweetened form. Somehow, the film made the music fresh. Instead of the same hits heard endlessly on the radio, it offered alternate studio cuts, live versions and — a revelation that struck me the most — the hungry, pre-fame band bashing out Chuck Berry covers in leather suits. (“Live at the BBC,” an album with more stripped-down radio sessions from the early days, had given me a first taste when it came out the year before “Anthology.”) Then, as now, “Anthology” arrived with plenty of media hype. But its portrait of the band, captured with archival footage and interviews, humanized them in a way I had never seen before, with a seductive narrative about how the lads from Liverpool conquered the world, and how success had affected them as people. There are stunning moments. In one, the camera rides with the band through Manhattan as their car is mobbed by screaming teenage fans — as vivid a you-are-there documentary scene as anything now on Netflix. George Harrison, who by the 1990s was the most reluctant of the members to participate, has some of the most poignant quotes about the costs of megafame. “They gave their money and they gave their screams,” Harrison says of the band’s fans. “But the Beatles kind of gave their nervous systems, which is a much more difficult thing to give.” In retrospect, “Anthology” is also prime evidence for how the Beatles have closely tended their own history, tweaking it in each retelling. Most recently, the band has released a series of documentaries, including Peter Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back,” an immersive look at the group’s fraught 1969 recording sessions; next up, expected in 2028, are four biopics — one for each Beatle — by the director Sam Mendes. Plenty of worthy artists have vanished from public consciousness after they stopped making music. But the Beatles remain with us, more than 50 years after their breakup, in part because fans and Apple Corps, the company the band founded, have mythologized them so effectively. The rereleased “Anthology” is great, yes, but it’s also a way to keep the money rolling in, and to lure in a new generation who might not have cared about the band otherwise. It worked pretty well on me.
Politics
Climate
International
Other Big Stories
Has sports betting ruined sports? Yes. Gambling has always been a threat to the integrity of sports leagues. “It would be wonderful if all sports betting could again be banned, but, failing that, at least ban prop betting,” The Washington Post’s Max Boot writes. No. Sports leagues and gambling companies are taking steps to keep games fair. Now gambling can take place out in the open, “where everyone’s kneecaps are safe even after the worst losses,” The Orange County Register’s Rafael Perez writes.
Let’s end the stigma: Audiobooks count as reading, Brian Bannon, a librarian, writes. The Epstein files should put the powerful on notice, just like the #MeToo movement did, Rachel Louise Snyder writes. And here is a column by Ross Douthat on Trump’s approval rating. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year.
F-150s over Lamborghinis: Shaboozey is a 30-year-old former rapper who got interested in country music after discovering a NASCAR jacket in a vintage shop. He’s now one of the genre’s big stars, navigating complex lines between what’s traditional and what’s new. Peek-a-boo: Saturn’s rings are still there. But an optical illusion involving the planet’s tilt makes it look like they’re about to disappear. Mariupol: More than three years after Russian troops captured the Ukrainian city, the Kremlin is pouring billions of dollars into remaking it. Rose Bowl: The stadium battle between Pasadena, Calif., and U.C.L.A. is about money, nostalgia and so much more. Your pick: The Morning’s most-clicked link yesterday was about how to win a white elephant gift exchange. Toy inventor: Burt Meyer created Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots in the 1960s and collaborated on the designs of classics like Mouse Trap, Toss Across and Mr. Machine. He died at 99.
College football: A University of Alabama at Birmingham football player stabbed two teammates, according to the school. Both victims are in stable condition. Golf: Trump chose Jack Nicklaus to lead the restoration of two golf courses at a military installation just outside Washington, D.C.
“The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother),” by Rabih Alameddine “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” by Omar El Akkad It’s awards season in the book world — not quite as star-studded as the Hollywood equivalent, but exciting nonetheless. On Wednesday night, at a black-tie event in downtown Manhattan, two very different examinations of the past and present Middle East landed National Book Awards. Alameddine’s comic novel about a 63-year-old high school teacher living with his mother took home the prize for fiction, and El Akkad’s brief, searing indictment of Western responses to the devastation in Gaza landed the prize for nonfiction. In his acceptance speech, El Akkad said, “It’s difficult to think in celebratory terms when I spent two years seeing what shrapnel does to a child’s body.” Alameddine — who thanked his psychiatrist and gastroenterologist — also spoke of the crisis in Gaza. He said, “Sometimes, as writers, we have to say: enough.”
This week’s subject for The Interview is John Green, whose beloved young adult novels, including the best-selling “The Fault in Our Stars,” and earnest YouTube videos have attracted a devoted audience of millions. There’s all sorts of evidence that social media and watching videos and living online is bad for young people. Do you have any ambivalence about participating in that ecosystem? Yeah, I made a video a while back called “Am I Cigarettes?” where I wondered if just by creating content on the social internet I might be a form of tobacco consumption. I do have a lot of ambivalence about it. Where did you land on that question? I came out of that video quite unsure as to whether I’m cigarettes. My brother then made a follow-up video where he was like, ‘We’ |
