Year:  1965
Rating: 6.0

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First there were the Beatles. There are very few things for which I am grateful that I am as old as I am but two of them are I am old enough to have seen John F.Kennedy inaugurated and the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The success of the Beatles of course opened the door to a basket full of other British bands. Some like the Rolling Stones, The Who and the Kinks went on to lengthy careers carving out their own identity. Then in the second tier were a lot of groups that had a short shelf life but in those few years put out some incredible songs - The Searchers, Dave Clark Five, Herman Hermits, The Yardbirds, The Animals and The Zombies. Then there were of course the bands that are long forgotten or just never made it at all. For some of these you can watch the German TV show at that time called The Beat Club. There are a bunch on You Tube and most of the groups are completely unknown to me. In this film there is a song competition - a few of the groups are Earl Royce and the Olympics, The Blackwells, The Black Knights, The Kubas and The Foremost. Good trivia questions. The Foremost was actually managed by Brian Epstein and recorded the first song John Lennon ever wrote titled Hello Little Girl and did another Lennon-McCartney song called I'm in Love. They were small hits but it wasn't enough.


And of course there was Gerry and the Pacemakers, who I would place in that second tier. They recorded some wonderful songs - You'll Never Walk Alone, Ferry Cross the Mersey, Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying, I Like It and though it wasn't a hit the pop masterpiece (to me) Chills. The first three songs they released were all number 1 hits in England. No one else did that until decades longer. They and the Beatles had a lot of things in common - all Liverpool lads, played in Hamburg, Brian Epstein was their manager and George Martin was their producer. But after those first three number one songs, they never had another one. By 1965 when this film was made their popularity was on the downward slide and in 1966 they broke up. So what happened? Like nearly all those early British groups they were left with nowhere to go when the Beatles upped their game and set music on another path with Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Peppers. They simply didn't have the song writers who could match this and new groups with a new sound came along and made them seem old fashioned. Golden Oldies now. Like me!


This movie which is clearly meant to revive their career by doing their own A Hard Days Night - it didn't - but it is a sweet time bauble and fairly joyful though with none of the edge of Hard Day's Night. No drama here. Just four Liverpudlians cracking jokes, breaking into the business and singing a bunch of songs (but not Chills to my disappointment). Unlike A Hard Days Night in which the Beatles are already on the way up with crazy crowds chasing them - this is a fictional account of how the group got their first break. Nearly all of it centers on the group leader Gerry Marsden with the other three getting short shrift - even his brother Fred! But similar to Hard Days Night it is full of goofy humor - though not as class conscious as was the Beatles - and those accents make them sound at times so much like John. Marsden is sort of John and Ringo combined in terms of humor.


At the competition there is also a song by Cilia Black - and it is hosted by Jimmy Saville. Saville is both famous and infamous if you don't know him. In his lifetime he was an enormously popular TV personality who also raised large amounts of money for charity. But after his death the stories of him as a sexual predator of children came out - hundreds of them that were often covered up by the powers that be. Very sick.