MUSIC

Five times when it wasn’t much fun being a Beatle

Kim Willis
USA TODAY
The Beatles (from left): Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon at the BBC Television Studios in London on June 17, 1966, just before the start of their world tour.

Being a Beatle was the best — except for when it wasn't.

Ron Howard’s new documentary Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years (now on Hulu; expands to additional theaters Friday; out Nov. 18 on Blu-ray/DVD) captures the exhilarating highs of Beatlemania, while being fairly frank about the mortifying lows.

A few of the latter that were shared with USA TODAY:

1: Strangers were constantly in their hair. Literally.

“There were always people like this as we went into the gate,” says Ringo Starr, crooking his fingers through a pretend chain-link fence. In Wales, “I remember it so well,” one determined fan resolutely grabbed hold of the drummer’s shaggy locks.

The crowds in Washington were even bolder. At a reception at the British ambassador’s house in 1964, a woman wielding a pair of scissors famously helped herself to a lock of Starr’s hair. “And we thought, ‘No, no, NO,’ " says Paul McCartney.

“We thought it would be quite a cool crowd,” he adds. “But they weren’t cool at all.”

'Eight Days a Week' embraces The Beatles as a live sensation

2: Sonically, Shea Stadium was one of the most frustrating venues of their career. So they played there again the next summer.

Not that they recall their encore performance in 1966. When asked about the second Shea show during interviews for The Beatles Anthology documentary, Starr says he blanked: “We played it twice??!!”

“Then (the filmmakers) went to George (Harrison) and said, ‘And the second time you played Shea …’ And George said, ‘We played it twice??!!’ "

3. Near the end of their touring years, fans were screaming at them, not for them.

On a 1966 stop in the Philippines, the band unwittingly snubbed first lady Imelda Marcos by declining her invitation to the Presidential Palace. A mob of spitting and kicking demonstrators responded in kind.

“It was a scary moment,” Starr says. “I was sharing (a hotel room) with John (Lennon), and we called down for breakfast and papers.” Neither showed up. “We called down again: ‘Can we have the breakfast?’ And we put the TV on and there’s this sad shot of all these disappointed kids at this (reception) we didn’t turn up to. And that’s why it went mad.”

4: The Beatles had free run of the place when they were recording at Abbey Road — with one exception.

“They weren’t allowed to get into the kitchen at night,” says Eight Days a Week producer Nigel Sinclair. “Eventually, they got so fed up” that the band’s road manager Mal Evans “went down there with a hammer and hacked the padlock off” during sessions for 1968’s White Album.

“And when he got in, the fridge was padlocked because people drank other people’s milk. So he hacked that off (as well),” Sinclair says. “On Monday, when people came in, they thought there’d been burglars.

“The only people who said no to them were the people who ran the kitchen at Abbey Road.”

5. Their kids used them to meet even cooler celebrities.

“John came to the Happy Days set” in the mid-'70s, Howard says. Because, um, Lennon’s son Julian “wanted to meet the Fonz” (Henry Winkler).