The year 1983 marked a home entertainment milestone for me. It was the year I purchased my first videocassette recorder. It was a Panasonic VHS which I got on sale at Service Merchandise for $400. Of course, I had to supplement my new toy with some films, even though few releases of that time could be bought new for less than $50. One of those that met the under $50 criteria was The Compleat Beatles, which had been made for home video and released in that form in 1982, and enjoyed a brief theatrical run in 1984. It's a two-hour documentary narrated by Malcolm McDowell.

McDowell tells the story of the band from its inception during the skiffle music era through their break-up in 1970. Beatle associates, fellow musicians, and Beatle historians add their insight to the evolution of the band from a group of leather-clad lads to fun-loving mop tops to four men who discovered their identities as individual musicians. All members are included in this documentary, including Pete Best and the late Stuart Sutcliffe. Their home town of Liverpool had been known primarily as a seaport before the Beatles and other musicians from that city started to pay their musical dues touring the country as well as playing in Germany, where these bands found a receptive audience to their brand of rock and roll.

They also played many gigs in their hometown, where a record department manager named Brian Epstein offered to promote and manage them. It was in the process of promoting that Epstein met a classically-trained musician and record producer named George Martin. Martin asked Epstein for an introduction to the Beatles, and heard a sound he liked. Martin is prominently featured in eighties footage in The Compleat Beatles as he shares his memories of being watching the Beatles grow and evolve as a band. In his years of working with the band, he saw John, Paul, George, and Ringo develop their own styles and work to get more album time. He also recalls the problems he and Epstein had convincing EMI, the parent label of the Beatles (In England, they were signed to Parlophone, an EMI subsidiary) to release the Fab Four's songs. Some of the musicians who worked with or were friendly with the Beatles also took time to share their memories, including fellow British Invasion singers Billy J. Kramer, who had hits with his band, the Dakotas, and Gerry Marsden, the lead singer of Gerry And The Pacemakers. Tony Sheridan and Billy Preston, who recorded with the Beatles at opposite ends of the band's career, also discuss their roles in Beatles history.

The surviving stars of The Compleat Beatles, however, do not contribute to this presentation (John Lennon had already died at that point). Still, American documentary filmmaker Patrick Montgomery, who did work on other music-related projects during the seventies and eighties, presents a carefully constructed video that covers the pertinent points in Beatles history. Plenty of good archive footage of the band is included, including footage of the band from their days as a struggling band. Other interesting footage includes the quartet performing "Yesterday" in concert, as well as clips of promotional music films they made, like "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Hey Jude." Mardsen and Preston even play a few bars for the camera, and take pride in being involved with this era of music, each in different ways. I especially like the sequence where Mardsen plays a few bars of the Cliff Richard hit, "Livin' Doll," and sings with a deliberate British accent, in direct opposition to the way Richard, Marsden, the Beatles, and other British musicians sang with American-sounding vocals on their records.

The Compleat Beatles is one of the Beatles videos that has yet to make the transition from VHS to DVD - and that's a shame for Beatles fans who own the tape. Other Beatles videos that fall into that dubious distinction include Let It Be and an appearance the band made on the British TV program Ready Steady Go!. Outside of not including hands-on participation by the Fab Four, I don't have any major problem with The Compleat Beatles. I know the band's career was covered thoroughly in The Beatles Anthology, but The Compleat Beatles takes viewers on a fact-filled look at the rise and fall of one of popular music's most influential bands. The movies of the eighties have been remembered and celebrated in so many ways. The retrospective train, however, needs to stop and remember this title, which was available before any of the Beatles movies found their way to home video. This video presents Beatlemania from those who were involved with the phenomenon, as well as those who were affected by it. It's been years since the four best-known Beatles worked together on anything new, but their work can't yet be classified as ancient history. That won't happen until all of us are long past ancient.


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Thanks Dave.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12