The Beatles - Rare & Unseen

Help! They need somebody

The promise of the title, Rare & Unseen, goes unfulfilled. The material in this 45-minute documentary will be all too familiar to fans: The Beatles in a Liverpool club in February 1962; The Beatles on tour in Dundee in 1964; The Beatles filming Magical Mystery Tour. It’s all shown without original sound but with annoying commentary or jingly-jangly music. Phil Collins keeps telling us he can’t describe what The Beatles were like, so why doesn’t he just shut up about it?

The producers follow a welltrodden path for the interviewees: a Quarryman, their first manager, Allan Williams, their publicist, Tony Barrow and their roadie, Tony Bramwell. It’s good to hear Norman “Hurricane” Smith and the French star Sylvie Vartan, but nobody says more than a few sentences at a time and the moving backdrops make for uncomfortable viewing. Fuller versions of the interviews are in the DVD extras, but the conversation is so bland that – and this writer never thought he’d ever say this – I longed for Paul Morley.

1 stars

Liberation | LIB 6126

Reviewed by Spencer Leigh
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