They Make Me Feel Alright: A Hard Day’s Night Still Thrills the Kid in Me
By Steve Wagner
She looks more like him than I do. – John Lennon
He’s very…clean. – Paul McCartney
You don’t see many of these nowadays, do you? – George Harrison
There you go, hiding behind a smokescreen of bourgeois clichés. – Ringo Starr
Sometimes, just the fact that a film exists is enough to change or mark your life in significant ways, and for me, A Hard Day’s Night is top of the list. Upon watching it again recently (for at least the fiftieth time), I was completely transported back to my mostly giddy, carefree, sun-drenched childhood, while the more mature (snort) film critic and musicologist in me was once again bowled over by the instinctive brilliance and collaborative alchemy on display.
I was too young to see the movie on the big screen the first time around. I had to wait until it was shown on local television in 1971, when I was ten years old. But the timing of the airing—Friday morning at 9am—posed a serious problem for this 4th grader. It was a school day, and I knew chances were slim-to-none my parents would acquiesce to my staying home from school to watch a movie, much less a rock & roll movie. From the moment I saw the listing in the TV guide, I could think of nothing else, and began scheming to be in front of the television set that fateful morning come hell or high water.
A bit of context: By this time in my life I had become absolutely obsessed with the Beatles. Make no mistake, I loved them at first listen, which came mostly in the form of 45 rpm records owned by the older kids in my neighborhood. Full albums were a rarity in those days. Then, in 1969, my cousin Don was drafted, and the night before he left for the war gave me his small collection of albums, which included seven by the Beatles—all American Capitol releases: Meet the Beatles, The Beatles Second Album, The Early Beatles, Beatles ’65, The Beatles VI, Help!, and Rubber Soul. Also, around that time, I borrowed the book The Beatles: An Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies from my cousin Carol. By the time A Hard Day’s Night was to air on St. Louis’ KPLR-TV Channel 11, I was literally spending hours every day listening to those records and reading that book, over and over and over again.
So, the opportunity to finally see A Hard Day’s Night was about as big a deal as my ten-year-old consciousness could fathom. Failure was simply not an option…but how could I possibly make this happen? I quickly deduced that I had no real recourse beyond begging, crying, and/or claiming to be sick, none of which I suspected would work. And so, I began setting the stage. Wednesday night after dinner, I approached my folks in the living room, and calmly and respectfully asked if I could stay home on Friday to watch the movie. They of course said NO…and I began begging. After a short while, I “gave up.” I repeated the action on Thursday night, this time with MUCH more begging and a generous display of tears. Still no permission, exactly as expected. The real showdown, I knew, would come Friday morning, and I had but two small advantages: 1) My parents both worked, and would need to leave before the movie started, and 2) Dad left before Mom. It would come down to a battle of nerves with Mom. I would need to wear her out, and then take the punishment later when Dad came home from work. This didn’t faze me. I was more than willing to be grounded for a full year if that’s what it took.
Friday morning, at the breakfast table, I didn’t say a word. I stayed sullen, quiet, and tried my best to look like I was ill. After Dad left, I slipped back into my room, stripped off my clothes, crawled back in bed, and waited. Mom soon appeared, demanding I get my butt dressed and off to the bus stop. I said I was too sick to go to school. She said that wasn’t going to work and to get moving NOW. Time for a little circular logic mixed in with the special pleading. If I missed the movie, I explained, I would get sick! Why, the very idea of missing the movie was making me sick!
She was having none of it, but the clock was ticking. She took me by the wrist and pulled. I became dead weight. She would have to dress me and drag me to the bus stop. In short time, my first act of non-violent protest ended in victory. She muttered something about how I would regret it when Dad got home and put a thermometer in my mouth. I held my breath—the finish line was near—and tried to psychically will it to show a fever (to no avail). When she read it, she simply said, “You’re something else” and gave a bit of a laugh. She wasn’t angry, just flummoxed, and I just prayed she would run interference at 5:30pm when Dad walked in the door. Then she left, and in the immortal words of Ringo on the fire escape, “We’re OUT!”
I grabbed my little, cheap cassette tape recorder, set up shop in front of the TV, and for the next two hours was in as close to heaven as my pea-brain could imagine. I’ll admit I felt more than a tinge of guilt, and knew that whatever the penalty, it would be deserved. But I also felt I had a right to make a stand such as this, for a reason such as this. This was me taking my personal destiny seriously, and even if no one thought I had the right, I knew that my future would justify the bratty behavior. Beyond being a little scared for the consequences, I felt I had claimed my life as my own in some small way. And, you know what? My parents didn’t punish me. Because they loved me. Deep down, they knew.
A Hard Day’s Night was everything I hoped for and more. I laughed, danced, sang, levitated, and captured the entire film on tape. I listened to those tapes hundreds of times, even after I was finally able to afford the album (not the soundtrack, mind you, but the American version of it, Something New). I can still recite the dialog word for word. A couple years after that first viewing, I bought my first guitar with lawn-mowing money (and a little help from Dad) and started taking lessons. That movie, and the songs of the Beatles, did change my life, and that influence has been reflected in nearly every professional endeavor I’ve undertaken since.
After college in St. Louis, I moved to Lawrence, Kansas to attend grad school at K.U.—but put a band together instead and spent the next six years on the road as a singer and guitarist with the Backsliders. We did a lot of original material but were primarily a cover band with a specialty in—you guessed it—Beatles and British Invasion hits. We covered dozens of Beatle songs, and, because of A Hard Day’s Night, I insisted we learn the song they open with at the climactic concert at the end of the film. If it worked for them, I reasoned, it will work for us. “Tell Me Why” is basically two minutes of delirium, and we often opened our shows with it, and maybe it’s just me, but I think there was always an energy transference associated with the movie. Those were the salad days, as they say. I got to play Beatles and classic rock music all over the country with my best friends, and I wouldn’t trade a day of it.
In my early thirties, I moved to California, eventually settling in the Bay Area. After a chance meeting with a young television producer, we soon co-wrote, produced, and hosted the program Reel Life (later Filmtrip on ABC/KGO in San Francisco), a movie review show with a few added elements: entertainment news, industry topics, and celebrity interviews. Looking back, the episode I am most proud of was the one dedicated solely to—you guessed it—the Beatles. Concurrent with the DVD releases of their first three movies, we structured an entire show around their unique impact on film and reviewed each of their five commercial offerings: A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, and Let it Be. To my knowledge, this remains unique in network television.
After Filmtrip ran its course, I moved into the world of commercial art, becoming a gallery director for the San Francisco Art Exchange, which specialized in rock photography and original album cover art. My passion for Beatles photography was what got me hired in the first place, and for nearly a decade, I sold rock & roll fine art. In this collectable realm, the Beatles reigned supreme. It was a great honor to represent many of their notable photographers, and Robert Freeman most of all, who shot their first five album covers. His photo montage during the closing credits of A Hard Day’s Night remains one of my favorite sequences in all of film. I consider those images to be the very best portraits of the Beatles, and I hawked them excitedly for years, with a zeal reminiscent of, well, a ten-year-old kid seeing the movie for the first time.
After leaving the gallery, I became a full-time writer, contributing articles on film and music to various publications, working as a ghostwriter for a couple of publishers, and, mostly, laboring on my life’s work, a book about, surprise, the Beatles. After ten years of toil, All You Need is Myth: The Beatles and the Gods of Rock was published by Waterside in 2019. I now spend my time promoting the book, giving multimedia presentations on its subject matter, and developing the second book in the series—in other words, talking and writing about the Beatles. Now, nearly fifty years after I first connived my way into seeing A Hard Day’s Night, they are still a driving force in my life, a source of never-ending interest, and yes, love.
Reviewing a favorite movie always presents a paradox. On the one hand, a critic must stay detached and strive to view a film dispassionately, with keen eye and ear at the ready to spot, note, and eventually explain both innovation and contrivance. On the other, we must remain the everyperson who can still be horrified by horror, thrilled by thriller, and romanced by romance as much as the average filmgoer. It is truly the best of both worlds when one becomes totally immersed in a film, lost in its thrall, surfing its waves all the way through to the final shot, and then discovering, upon later contemplation, that the thing really was as creatively inventive as it was personally involving.
I could certainly wax on and on about the artistry on display in the Beatles’ cinematic debut. Consider: the imaginative direction, rich black & white cinematography, whip-smart screenplay, exciting “quick-cut” editing, outstanding supporting performances, delightful score, and still-stirring, instantly recognizable songs: “A Hard Day’s Night,” “She Loves You,” “Tell Me Why,” “I Should Have Known Better,” “If I Fell,” “I’m Happy Just to Dance With You,” “And I Love Her,” “Can’t Buy Me Love.”
Or, the spine-tingling opening chord of the title song. The thrilling introduction of running Fabs with hundreds of screaming kids in hot pursuit. Patti Boyd as a giggling schoolgirl. Singing over a card game in the storage car. The hotel room filled with fan letters. John in the bathtub. The lads rollicking in a field. Poor, dejected Ringo. The keystone cops chase. The trap door in the stage. The Rickenbacker guitars. The hair. The HAIR!
And, of course, the Beatles. Here, even larger than life than usual, their presence alone makes for riveting cinema. Which is the most crucial element, as the film has the thinnest of plots, essentially just a ‘day in the life” faux documentary of the band travelling from Liverpool to London to tape a TV show. Indeed, it never even references the name “Beatles” until the very end, when we see the famous logo on Ringo’s Ludwig bass drum, and then in bright lights behind the group as they close the show. Their name is never spoken once by any character, and it didn’t need to be. By the time A Hard Day’s Night was released in the summer of 1964 their renown was global; they graced the pages of newspapers all over the world with a frequency previously reserved for Presidents and Queens.
A Hard Day’s Night feels just as significant in 2020 as it did when hyper-ventilating Beatlemaniacs first flooded theaters all over the Western world. Today, widely recognized as one of the best films of its era and most influential musicals of all-time, this unlikeliest of classics resides in the prestigious Criterion Collection and is included on BFI’s list of the 100 greatest British films of the 20th century. Roger Ebert considered it “one of the great life-affirming landmarks” and cited the concert footage of shrieking, convulsing fans as the boys sing “She Loves You” to be “one of the most sustained orgasmic sequences in the movies.”
When I first saw A Hard Day’s Night, I didn’t even know what an orgasm was. Looking back now, I’m surprised I didn’t have my first one that magical Friday morning, when I played hooky and staked a claim to the life I wanted, the life I needed.
This movie was the proof. They were real. Anything was possible. And I was on my way.
Steve Wagner was co-host, writer, and executive producer of the Bay Area television programs Reel Life and Filmtrip, reviewing over one thousand films and interviewing over three hundred actors, directors, writers, and musicians. As a director of the San Francisco Art Exchange gallery, he brokered sales of many of the world’s most famous original album cover artworks, including Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. He has ghostwritten or collaborated on several published books, contributed articles on music, film, and popular culture to numerous publications, and is the author of the book All You Need is Myth: The Beatles and Gods of Rock (Waterside, 2019), a study of the 1960s music renaissance through the lens of classical mythology.