Ron Howard‘s Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years, which I saw last night, reminded me that I’m really sick of listening to those same old recordings of the Beatles’ greatest hits from their early period (pre-Rubber Soul). You reach a saturation point with certain songs. Obviously Howard understands this, and yet he plays track after track of these top-40 groaners, over and over and over and over…Christ.
The reason, I’m presuming, is that Howard wants the doc to reach younger people who aren’t sick of these songs. That’s fine from a marketing standpoint but deathly from the perspective of any longtime fan. All I know is that I literally can’t listen to those standard-issue versions of these same old songs any more. The sound waves bounce off my ears because there’s a counter-voice inside me going “no…not again!”
There was one moment that really got me, and that was mainly because I’d never listened to the Beatles Anthology 1 album, a collection of alternate takes that covers their recordings from the late ’50s to late ’64. I had therefore, until last night, never heard a rough but very cool alternate version of “Eight Days A Week.” It begins with an “ooooo!” a cappella (joined by amped acoustic guitar) and finishes with the same “ooooo!” backed by full electric accompaniment and drums. (Plus the “week” in the chorus is sung in a harmonized falsetto.)
I’m telling you this track is 10 to 15 times better than the final version that everyone’s heard 17,000 fucking times. Listen to it — the final six bars of “oooo!” are perfect.