The Beatles - The First US Visit [DVD]

Given the paucity of few UK complete visual recordings (e.g. no London Palladium or Royal Variety Show tapes kept)or UK documentaries, we must be forever grateful to whoever at UK Granada TV had the great insight to guess that in hitting the US for just over one week with the platform of the Ed Sullivan shows (NY and Miami)and an intervening live show in Washington DC would deliver a unique artefact of Beatlemania. On top of that to then decide to use the Maysles Brothers with their "hands on" cinema verite style to make these historic recordings was a truly inspired choice (proven yet again in their later "Gimme Shelter" documentary of the Rolling Stones in the late 1960s).

While the recordings of certain parts of this DVD may be topped in quality elsewhere in other recent releases, having seen this documentary several times in torrid "old TV" tapes format across the 1980s in UK cinemas this DVD is a very good quality version given access to the original tapes. The additional footage of deleted scenes plus Albert Maysle commenting on what it was like really like in making the film, underlines that this is an amazing record with a level of access to the Beatles that was never repeated plus captures beautifully how fully they conquered the USA in 1964, without realising at the time what they had achieved.

Interesting other observations having watched the DVD several times are how much all four Beatles were in strong personal empathy ( especially Ringo as the lynchpin of a lot of their dry humour which so enraptured them to the Americans and against the backdrop of the prior sacking of Pete Best)plus the growing absence of Lennon (based on the film footage shown here)who seems already to have started to inhabit his own space.

A priceless visual documentary record!