Las Vegas Weekly

June 18, 2008 · 10:42 AM

All Together Now, let’s list some non-album Beatles faves

By John Katsilometes

All they need is Love: The creative minds and assorted legends behind the Beatles/Cirque production at The Mirage.

Photo: CineVegas Film Festival

The film I’ve been most eager to see at this year’s CineVegas Film Festival premieres tonight (and today is Paul McCartney’s 66th birthday). It’s All Together Now, the documentary chronicling the behind-the-scenes conflicts and triumphs during the creation of Love at The Mirage. What I’m most interested in from this authorized project is how deep the conflicts actually were during the creative process, and how much of that material made the final cut.

I have heard that one of the chief antagonists, remarkably, was not Yoko Ono or either surviving Beatle, but Olivia Harrison, who pushed for an orchestral score for the acoustic version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps used in the production. The idea of Olivia Harrison, who is linked to the Beatles as the widow of George Harrison, giving directives to legendary producer Sir George Martin for the only piece of new music in Love is an intriguing concept, to put it gently.

This film got me thinking (which is a proposition even more dangerous than Olivia Harrison changing Beatles classics) about my favorite non-album Beatles projects over the years. I have included my top-five favorite films, stage shows and DVD collections as a must-see list for any Beatles fan. Or, even, Olivia Harrison:

1. A Hard Day’s Night: The first film is the best film, shot in clean black-and-white and serving as an action-brimming account of a day in the life (hey, there’s a good song title) of the Beatles at the peak of Beatlemania. My favorite seen is still when Paul yanks John out of the train car as Lennon attempts to put the moves on a few of the band’s female fans (one of whom is Patti Boyd, who would become George’s first wife).

2. Ed Sullivan Presents: The Beatles: The band’s four appearances on Sullivan’s wide-ranging variety program are shown at length, including commercials. So we get the actual performances interspersed with commercials for Barbasol and Lipton iced tea. The rundown is like this: Ed, Lipton commercial, Beatles, Frank Gorshin. It’s stunning how wildy contemporary the band appears when juxtaposed against Gorshin, who does a pretty good Jimmy Cagney impression (also, check out the kid who stars in the scene from Oliver, who looks like he's about to board the last train to Clarksville).

3.Love: The digitally remastered music, pumped through more than 6,000 speakers in the former Siegfried & Roy theater, sells the show. The Cirque crew is great, but in this one they could be playing dominoes onstage and this show would still work.

4.Yellow Submarine: To reiterate a point I’ve made many times, see it stoned.

5.Let It Be: The 1970 feature-length documentary went off its rails during filming. What was supposed to be a live performance of new material famously unspooled in to a video essay of the band’s breakup. The best/worst scene is Harrison and McCartney arguing over Harrison’s playing during “I’ve Got A Feeling.” A clearly agitated Harrison tells McCartney, “I’ll play whatever you want me to play, or I’ll play nothing at all.” He played, fortunately, but by then the band was gassed.

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