ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
It was the introduction that changed music history.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW")
ED SULLIVAN: Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles.
(CHEERING)
SCHMITZ: A little over 60 years ago, the Beatles appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show," and popular music in this country was never the same.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW")
THE BEATLES: (Singing) She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SCHMITZ: To commemorate that night, Disney+ just started streaming "Beatles '64," a documentary about the band's first visit to America in 1964. NPR's Felix Contreras is a Beatles fan and has watched this documentary. Welcome, Felix.
FELIX CONTRERAS, BYLINE: Hey, man. How you doing?
SCHMITZ: Good. So this is the Beatles. So much is already known about them. I feel like I just saw a very long documentary about them on Disney+ produced by Peter Jackson about their last album. What made this documentary different?
CONTRERAS: Rob, these guys were kids, man.
SCHMITZ: (Laughter).
CONTRERAS: Ringo and John were 23. Paul was 21. George was 20. And the film captures them in the eye of this popular culture hurricane. And what we see is they are virtually prisoners in their hotel room in the Plaza Hotel in New York because the teenyboppers that they hear outside, they would tear them the shreds if they left the room. So there's this rarely seen footage of amused boredom. They're reading papers, listening to the radio, trying to act natural with these cameras in their faces.
SCHMITZ: So Felix, it's worth pointing out that all of this was happening as the United States was going through some major changes. We have to look at the historical perspective here. In 1964, the Civil Rights Movement was front and center in the nation's consciousness, and these four Brits just get dropped in the middle of that. Did that have any impact on The Beatles at that time?
CONTRERAS: You know, this film deals with the Beatles and race in a way that I've never seen before. In fact, there's a fascinating interview with Smokey Robinson of Motown fame. Let's listen to a little bit of that.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "BEATLES '64")
SMOKEY ROBINSON: They were the first white group that I had ever heard in my life say, yeah, we grew up listening to Black music. We love Motown. No other the white artist had ever said that - not anyone of magnitude - until The Beatles said that.
SCHMITZ: Huh.
CONTRERAS: Yeah, the film presents the growing popularity of the Beatles in Black and Latino audiences, again, something I've never seen before. There's also this really cool story by vocalist Ronnie Spector. Now, when her group, the Ronettes, toured England, The Beatles went to see them. So when they arrived in New York, they called up Ronnie Spector and said, hey, bring the band by. Let's hang out at the hotel. She snuck them out of the back door of the hotel, took them to Harlem. And they ended up having lunch or dinner at this barbecue joint, and no one recognized them.
SCHMITZ: Oh, my gosh.
CONTRERAS: It was a momentary relief from the craziness of Beatlemania. It was pretty cool.
SCHMITZ: So I think what a lot of people remember about those Ed Sullivan performances was the audience, I mean, the women in the crowd just sort of - just completely losing it. You know, I wonder if this documentary focuses more on the actual performance, like, how the band sounded back then.
CONTRERAS: You know, Rob, it's still astounding to me to see how polished they were at that age. This film covers a two-week visit to the U.S. And February 9, they played "Ed Sullivan" in New York. February 16, they played "The Ed Sullivan Show" on Miami Beach. And in between, they did a gig on February 11 at the Washington Coliseum, which was normally used for boxing matches, circuses, family entertainment. This was their first-ever public performance in front of a live audience here in the U.S.
SCHMITZ: Wow.
CONTRERAS: Not in front of a TV audience - in front of all those screaming girls that you mentioned.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
THE BEATLES: (Singing) Just call on me, and I'll send it along with love from me to you.
CONTRERAS: You know, ultimately, "Beatles '64" offers another glimpse of four young guys having the time of their lives, making extremely well-crafted music in the moments just before they became this worldwide phenomena and the people that we know today.
SCHMITZ: That's Felix Contreras. He's the co-host of the Alt.Latino podcast for NPR Music. And - fun fact - he also has his own Latin Beatles cover band. Thank you, Felix.
CONTRERAS: Thank you, Rob.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
THE BEATLES: (Singing) If there's anything that you want, if there's anything I can do, just call on me and I'll send... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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