ALBERT MAYSLES’ BEATLES FILMS WERE AN ENDURING RELIC OF THEIR FABLED EARLY YEARS

When the Beatles went to the US for the first time, Albert Maysles and his brother, David, brilliantly caught the squealing surge of excitement from fans. 
The hugely creative contribution made by Albert Maysles in partnership with his brother David to the art of cinematography included one interesting early assignment – The Beatles in New York, a Granada TV programme that the Maysleses were commissioned to film.
It was a wonderfully exhilarating example of freewheeling cinéma vérité vividly capturing the Beatles’ first rapturous American welcome in February 1964. The sequences of the screaming teenyboppers being held back by the city’s mounted police on their rearing horses made for a thrilling opening, and the camera work was always brilliantly involved with the squealing surge as it closed in on its new idols. There are also some wonderfully surreal passages of when the Beatles were let loose amid the splendours of their Plaza Hotel suite, where they were minded by an eccentric but greatly entertaining New York disc jockey, Murray the K.

 

Albert Maysles talking about the unexpected invitation from Granada

The idea of filming the visit came from Granada’s daily magazine programme, Scene at Six Thirty, of which I was the executive producer. We had decided that we could not allow this crucial event in the Beatles’ career to go unmarked. Our presenter Peter Eckersley was assigned to supervise the production, together with a versatile young director-researcher, Dick Fontaine.

The idea of using the Maysles brothers to shoot the film came from the director Peter Brook, a close friend of Granada’s chairman, Sidney Bernstein. Brook had told Sidney there were two clever young men in New York doing much to develop the art of film with light portable cameras and unobtrusive sound equipment. We decided that they seemed the perfect match for the occasion.

The programme was nearly aborted when Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager, decided at the last moment to withdraw permission on the grounds that Granada were blatantly cashing in on the Beatles’ fame. Following an awkward phone conversation between Epstein and myself, Fontaine suggested I should call Paul McCartney. “Don’t worry,” said that most sagacious and influential member of the quartet, “I’ll talk him round.”

 

Albert Maysles talking about the Beatles’ interest in film-making

Paul’s intervention worked wonders, and the project was relaunched in a fairly desperate scramble. The passport office in Manchester had to open specially during the night to issue Eckersley with travel documents, and the Maysleses complained that they had been given barely an hour’s notice to get to John F Kennedy airport.

The brothers made a second film for Granada, The Beatles in Washington, a more straightforward account of their other big American concert that was superbly well filmed within its arena constraints. In the end we were relieved that we had been able to celebrate with an appropriate flourish the arrival of Granada-land’s boyish heroes on their first visit to the new world. Our serendipitous choice of the Maysles brothers to cover the occasion ensured that the resulting films became an enduring relic of the Beatles’ fabled early years.