Fab Four – Memphis Flyer

There is a video that occasionally pops up online, but usually gets taken down quickly. It’s an August 3, 1983, benefit concert at First Avenue for the Minnestoa Dance Theater — the night Prince debuted his new band, The Revolution, and played “Purple Rain” for the first time.

Every other time Prince plays “Purple Rain” from that moment until his tragic death in 2016, the opening chords are met with ecstatic cheers, and the audience sings along to the “woo woo-woo wooooo” of the coda. But not that night. When the anonymous First Avenue videographers who captured the moment pan across the crowd, most of them are half-ignoring Prince. Who cares about some new song that doesn’t sound anything like “1999”?

Himesh Patel in Yesterday

But for some of them, there is a growing recognition that something wonderful is happening. When Prince plays the climactic guitar solo like he’s calling the angels down from heaven, a girl in the front row clasps her hands and bows her head as if in prayer. The guy beside her turns to his friend and, slack-jawed, jabs a thumb at the band. “Are you hearing this?”

That feeling of being there at the creation, when it suddenly felt like the world was new, is what Yesterday is all about. Jack (Himesh Patel) is a singer/songwriter from a sleepy English coastal resort town who splits his time between his music and working part-time at a Tesco-like warehouse superstore. Ellie (Lily James), his friend since childhood, is his “manager” and biggest fan. She comes to all of his gigs, which range from busking on the street to being ignored at children’s birthday parties. Finally, she gets him a spot at the Latitude Festival in nearby Suffolk. He’s excited. This could be his big break! But since it turns out to be in the locals tent, he once again plays to no one.

Terminally frustrated, he decides to hang up his guitar for good and return to teaching. But when he’s riding his bike home after a row with Ellie, a mysterious worldwide blackout happens. In the darkness and chaos, Jack is hit by a bus. When he awakens in the hospital, he’s missing a couple of front teeth. But the world, he soon finds out, is missing something more significant: The Beatles. No one but Jack can remember John, Paul, George, and Ringo. When he searches for them, Google asks, “Did you mean: beetles?”

So what does a singer/songwriter do when he’s slipped into an alternate universe where no one has heard “Yesterday”? He struggles to remember the chords and lyrics, then passes the song off as his own. Jack’s own personal First Avenue moment comes when he plays “Let It Be” for his indifferent parents. But slowly, word gets out about this kid who had a head injury and then starting writing incredible songs, and Jack is on his way to fame and fortune.

There are a lot of fascinating “what ifs?” along these lines, moments when a subtle twist here or there would forever change history. What if Elvis hadn’t made a big impression on Sun Records’ Marion Keisker and she never told Sam Phillips about him? What if DJ Kool Herc’s family never migrated from Jamaica to the Bronx? What if Mark David Chapman’s wife called the cops before he murdered John Lennon? But the real question is, would any of those scenarios make a better light comedy by Trainspotting director Danny Boyle and Love, Actually writer Richard Curtis?

Yesterday has its moments. Patel, a veteran British comedy actor, is charming and charismatic. He’s no Sir Paul, but he can actually sing okay. English songster Ed Sheeran appears as himself, and he can actually act okay. The film finds some teeth when Kate McKinnon shows up as Jack’s agent and starts dripping venom on the music industry.

But there’s not enough of that. Like most music nerds, I’m a fan of the Fab Four. But I understand how folks are turned off by the hype from the Beatle Industrial Complex. The film treats it as a given that the world would be unrecognizable if no one had ever heard “I Saw Her Standing There” and that “Help” would be a hit in 2019 if you just punked it up a bit. Yesterday plays it safe and provides pleasant entertainment. But The Beatles took big chances and never took their own press too seriously. That attitude would have made for a more interesting — and funnier — film.

Yesterday
Now playing at Cineplanet 16

Opens Friday at multiple locations

It was 50 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. That’s a factually incorrect statement but a good opening line to talk about the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ first appearance on American television.

To commemorate the event, Beatlemania will be sweeping the airwaves once again all this week with special concerts, documentaries, celebrations, and dedications.

For younger viewers, it will be a chance to see real-time footage of the Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (they made three in successive weeks), and the chaos that ensued. For old fans like me, it will be an opportunity to relive a revolutionary moment in the history of rock music, along with the 73 million other viewers that tuned in the night of February 9, 1964. The date is significant because, after that, nothing was ever the same.

The Ed Sullivan Show, which aired on Sunday nights, was a variety show that featured a potpourri of acts, including opera singers, acrobats, plate spinners, flamenco dancers, puppeteers, and pop musicians, to name a few. On February 9th, I was enjoying a Sunday dinner of hamburgers and spaghetti at Granny’s before we settled in front of the TV to witness the Beatles’ debut.

Of course, the elders tsk-tsked, while I went crazy. I was eagerly anticipating the Beatles’ television debut because I’d already bought the album. While cruising east on Walnut Grove on a clear January afternoon, something came on the car radio unlike anything I had ever heard, and I knew it must be that English band I’d been hearing about. I made an immediate left on Perkins and headed for Pop Tunes. They only had the new single in stock (which I still have in the original sleeve) but promised to call me when the LP arrived. Shortly afterward, I got the call that Meet the Beatles had arrived, and I snatched up one of the first copies. That evening, my friends and I got together to listen to first one side, and then the other, over and over again, completely captivated by this raw and exhilarating new sound.

We also marvelled at their matching Prince Valiant haircuts, their tailored suits, and their Italian boots with the raised heels that immediately and forever after became known as “Beatle boots.” The next day, we started to let our hair grow.

I realize the potential risk, that my writing about the Beatles could morph into nothing more than an old geezer raving about his favorite band from days of yore. Lord knows, I wouldn’t care about hearing someone from my parents’ generation talk about the first time they saw Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians. But the Beatles’ music has not only endured, it has thrived. When their songs finally became available for internet download a few years back, the news was received with the enthusiasm usually reserved for the latest, hottest thing. The 2009 release of “The Beatles Rock Band” video game, where participants simulate playing Beatle songs with controllers shaped like musical instruments, was a huge success and helped boost sales of the newly remastered Beatle albums on CD. It’s never surprising to hear that some of the most enthusiastic Beatle fans are the children or even the grandchildren of your friends. The band’s unmatchable career and the evolving message in their music has become a generational phenomenon, and if this week’s festivities are any indication, the music will continue to resonate into the foreseeable future.

In celebration, CBS News is presenting a “live, interactive event,” at the Ed Sullivan Theatre this Sunday, from 5 to 7 p.m., 50 years to the day after the Fab Four’s live performance. It will feature “rare footage from CBS News’ extensive archive of the Beatles’ first three days in New York City,” and a special tribute concert, sponsored by the Grammys, will air in Ed Sullivan’s former time-slot after the news special. Taped in Los Angeles the day after the Grammy Awards, featured artists include a reunited Eurythmics with Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, John Legend, Stevie Wonder, Katy Perry, John Mayer, and a Ringo/Paul reunion.

If that isn’t enough to satisfy your Fab Four fix, following the Grammy special, Paul and Ringo will appear live on a special David Letterman Show, airing, of course, from the Ed Sullivan Theatre.

All week, leading up to Sunday, Letterman’s musical guests will play Beatles songs. On February 8th, commemorating the Beatles’ iconic arrival at New York’s JFK Airport, the airport will host a celebration and dedicate a historical marker. A new book about the Beatles has been released titled, The Beatles: All These Years. Vol.1- Tune In, by Mark Lewisohn, whom The New York Times called “the most serious historian to have examined the Beatles’ lives and work.”

I guess so, because this first of three planned books runs 803 pages and only gets up to 1962. For those like me, who love the Beatles, all this activity shows that the Lads from Liverpool are going to be around for a long, long time. Strawberry Fields Forever, baby.

Randy Haspel writes the “Born-Again Hippies” blog, where a version of this column first appeared.