Hard Days Night. Was it a single, an album or a film? Was it fab, a phenomenon, a virus or a multimedia experience? All of the above of course. After giving us the album as cultural artefact they now gave us being a Beatle as pop art. We wanted to be in their gang and this is what it is like. You can’t buy love but you could experience Beatlemania, be their mates for 89 minutes, then run from the cinema laughing out loud with the exhilaration of it all. We identified with them completely; and with their view of the world. If only we could be as cool in dealing with authority.
From the opening declamatory chord of the single, which I first heard on Juke Box Jury, this was the consummate Beatles experience for their fans. And in 1964 the film was second at the box office to Goldfinger, where James Bond makes a point of mocking them, so most of the UK must have seen it. Here’s the Beatlemania vision of the single.
