http://www.examiner.com/beatles-in-national/beatles-archivist-who-has-seen-it-all-gets-64-d-c-show-back-to-the-big-screenBeatles archivist who has seen it all gets '64 D.C. show back to the big screen
The Beatles' Feb. 11, 1964 Washington Coliseum concert is one of their best-known shows. One huge reason is it was their first on American soil. And while it's not a rare video among collectors, it has circulated in incomplete forms of varying quality thanks to bootleggers. An edited form was also included in both releases of "The Beatles' U.S. Visit"
You can see memorabilia and images from the closed circuit broadcast in the slideshow at left. Also at left is the video trailer.
Another reason is that back in 1964 it was videotaped and presented in theaters all the country four times as part of a special film show featuring the Beatles concert, plus recently recorded live footage of the Beach Boys and Lesley Gore.
All the various forms of the Beatles' footage seen up to last November have been incomplete, missing "Long Tall Sally" and other incidental footage. When the Beatles finally hit iTunes in the middle of that month, the concert with unseen footage was included in the Beatles box set and also allowed to be streamed online until the end of the year.
The Beach Boys' footage has been available on DVD as "The Beach Boys' Lost Concert," but that DVD is missing "Monster Mash" and spoken introductions by Roger Christian, the KHJ Boss Jock who co-wrote "Don't Worry Baby," "Little Deuce Coupe" and several other Beach Boys songs with Brian Wilson. And the Lesley Gore footage has not been shown anywhere since originally screened.
Until now, that is. At 7:30 p.m. Feb. 11, 47 years to the day of the Washington show, the special concert screening from 1964 will be recreated at the Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles. For the first time, all three concerts will be shown in their original length and uncut.
Ron Furmanek, who worked on the Beatles archive footage seen in "The Beatles Anthology," is behind the event and says the screening will be "what you saw in March 1964 for the four screenings with nothing cut out." He calls the Washington show the first-ever pay-per-view concert.
"In March of '64, they ran it four times closed circuit through theaters all over the United States," he told us in a phone interview. Furmanek says the Beach Boys and Lesley Gore footage was taped after the Beatles. "They did a special 90-minute concert that you were able to pay your $2 and sit (and watch) in your local theater."
All the previous versions, even "The Beatles First U.S. Visit," didn't have what will be screened next month. "This was something that was missing and I found the master tapes in 1995. I worked on "The Beatles First U.S. Visit" a year or two earlier and we had to use a kinescope at that point because I hadn't found the videotape yet."
And though all the versions, including the one to be shown are in black-and-white, that wasn't the original plan.
"The Beatles' show was supposed to be in color," he says. "And it was going to be the very first color closed circuit broadcast ever with these new hand-held cameras that they invented. If you watch the concert, you'll notice five or six cameras and a few are hand held. At the last minute, the color was scrapped because of some problems with the tubes.
"That's why," Furmanek says, "the Beach Boys and Lesley Gore was recorded at NBC Burbank. They had the all-color studios. They could have easily went to CBS in Television City on Melrose or Fairfax or ABC at Prospect, which were black-and-white. But they chose Burbank because it was going to be recorded in color."
Furmanek is no stranger to the Beatles archives. He's been involved with restoring Beatles footage for over 20 years. "I was the first film archivist at Apple. I started back in '87, '88. I got the vaults all together. Basically, when you watch the 'Anthology' film, anything that looks super clear in there is my work, my restoration work and my discoveries," he says. "I'm an archive preservist, producer. I've got many titles."
One of the projects he has worked on was the Beatles' Shea Stadium film, the release of which is high on every Beatle fan's wish list. He says the bootleg versions that have appeared in the last few years don't come close to what the remastered version looks like.
"There was an auction a few years ago with some audio tapes, a rough soundboard recording from the stadium P.A. system, apparently, which is quite crude," he says. "It's nothing like the original tapes are. It might have nice fidelity, but it's raw. Microphones are going on and off.
"I found the original stereo tapes with M. Clay Adams in 1987," he says. "This bootleg is nothing but a mono P.A. feed. It's like what you heard if you were at the concession stand buying a hot dog. Whoever won that auction obviously synced that up with the picture. When I restored that film, I went off the original camera negatives. The film was shot in 35mm and the color is stunning off the negative. The bootlegs are off of a print that somebody found, a faded print that they color corrected."
"Take the footage off 'Anthology' that I did off the negative and then compare it to this current bootleg. You can see the difference," he says. "It's no master. It's just an old composite print. And when you have an Eastman Color print from 1965 or 1966, it's going to be faded beet-red or all brown."
"You can't beat the original camera negative. Apple has the originals. It doesn't have any fades. If there's a fadeout for a commercial, the negative doesn't have the fadeout," he says. "Shea Stadium, other than the sound issues, of any rock concert that was ever shot in the '60s of any group, I think Shea Stadium is the highest quality film. It looks better than 'Woodstock,' 'Gimme Shelter,' 'Monterey Pop.' It really does. Go look at it in 'Anthology." It's stunning. Put on the headphones and listen to it in 'Anthology'. You're going to hear some true stereo there, like 'Dizzy Miss Lizzy and 'I'm Down'."
He says the restored "Let It Be" looks equally fantastic."When I restored it, I sat down with (Neil Aspinall) and Derek (Taylor) up in the screening room where we were editing 'Anthology'. And they sat and watched the entire film. They were blown away. They couldn't believe the difference. It's a fun film to watch after I restored it. It's lively. It's crystal clear. There's no grain. There's no blow-up. There's one time Paul says something to George, but other than that, the movie's a lot of fun.
"It's not dark, it's not poor quality like the VHS or laserdisc that was released. It was shot in 16mm Kodachrome and Echtachrome and it's gorgeous. There's no problem with it. I remixed the entire second half of the film from the 8 track master multitrack tapes and it is in stereo, starting with the sessions in the studio and the concert on the roof."
And the video collection everyone is hoping for? "I restored and remixed all of the picture and audio for the promo films. That's all my work. They start in '65 and they're those funny black-and-white performances. The Beatles went into the studio. They actually videotaped most of them so they could ship them to different countries where they could not appear on TV to promote those records. These are not 'A Hard Day's Night' or 'Help!' These are just simple, mimed promotional videos, with a few amazing exceptions, like 'Paperback Writer' or 'Strawberry Fields Forever'."
"When the Red and Blue albums came out on CD for the first time, Apple simply serviced most of those again to promote the new CDs. When I was restoring them, I couldn't believe it when I found the 35mm camera cut negatives for 'Paperback Writer' and 'Rain.' And they were in color. Nobody had ever seen them in color. And look at the stunning quality I got out of those two negatives."
Why is this all taking so long to get released on DVD? "I have no idea when that will happen, but let's think positive," Furmanek says.
Will the Beatles/Beach Boys/Lesley Gore films be shown elsewhere besides Los Angeles? Furmanek says possibly they will. "It's non-profit. No one is making any profit. It's all for the American Cinematheque."
Will there be any special guests? "We hope to have some of the people who were there. Maybe a couple of the Beach Boys or Lesley Gore," he says hopefully. "We're going to have an intermission where the original intermission was in March 1964 right after the Lesley Gore and Beach Boys performances." The break will include an original commercial for a Beatles poster that was shown at the original screenings.
"It's going to be a lot of fun," he says.
That's a definite understatement.
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