Fans won’t learn anything new from the new Beatles documentary on Disney+, Beatles ’64, but they will get to see some fun old footage of the lads’ first trip to America in 1964, as well as some new interviews with the band’s two surviving members in 2024. And let’s just say that Paul McCartney is a lot less diplomatic now than he was sixty years ago.
When a present-day McCartney is asked how he felt about the less-than-warm welcome the Beatles received at a cocktail party at the British embassy in Washington, D.C.—a stop the band made on their way down from New York City to Miami, during their first two-week stint in the States—McCartney didn’t hold back.
“We didn’t give a flying fuck!” he exclaims, full of that signature boyish energy, even at the age of 82. “They’re working at an embassy. We’re on the road, rocking.”
But according to Harry Benson, a photographer who traveled with the Beatles on that first American trip, the boys were more bothered by the rude staff at the British embassy than McCartney lets on.
“The staff of the embassy treated them terrible. They were calling them scruff. The Beatles were in shock about it,” Benson says in a talking head interview, featured in the film. “George Harrison were near tears.”
But clearly, McCartney hasn’t held onto a grudge.
“We kinda got used it,” the present-day McCartney says. “We’re working class guys. If you came up against posh people, you figured they’re probably going to look down on you.”
Beatles ’64 is directed by David Tedeschi and produced by Martin Scorsese, Margaret Bodde, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison, Sean Ono Lennon, Jonathan Clyde, and Mikaela Beardsley, with Jeff Jones and Rick Yorn serving as executive producers. The film is now streaming on Disney+, free to all subscribers.
