Unlike the customary reboot of a superhero property in order for the studio to retain rights, when you revisit historically significant documentary subjects – especially over-represented ones such as The Beatles – you need to guarantee a better re-telling: more depth, greater expanse, new material, or a novel approach offering a clever angle. Given the mid-’90s Anthology project, 13-odd hours with DVD bonuses, Eight Days A Week is a master re-telling. The clever angle is “the touring years” – the most fundamental aspect of any band being live performance. Thus, cracking tales through Apple, the Maharishi and the break-up, to be told properly, each would require its own feature.

Where Eight Days A Week surpasses Anthology is in the quality of the retelling: Paul and Ringo provide more recent interviews for narrative, and they are complemented not by other key players – press officer, Derek Taylor, and roadie and Apple Corps General Manager, Neil Aspinall, have passed away – but by the mandatory celebrity “gobs-on-a-stick” (talking heads), who in this case contribute significantly: Sigourney Weaver recalls how she attended a performance in her smartest frock, in order that John, Paul, George and Ringo notice her among the thronging thousands of fans; Whoopi Goldberg retells how significantly the music transcended colour boundaries; and Eddie Izzard remarks on how well the Beatles dealt with hecklers.

And it is in these regards that Eight Days A Week shines brightest: live performance footage and press conferences as you have never seen them. Even if you are that hardest core of fan who can recite press conference dialogue verbatim, you will see clips that you haven’t seen before – The Beatles stating that they will not play to segregated audiences, for example – and experience profound joy when you hear the rest of the cinema audience roaring with laughter at The Fab Four’s various witty ripostes. And you will see lots of performance footage that will be new to you.

There will be times when you’ll stare and listen intently, trying to determine if this is the most technologically advanced clean-up of concert sound – given that the band couldn’t hear themselves or each other above the din of their screaming fans, and the biggest custom-made amplifiers Vox manufactured specially for the Beatles were a mere 100 watts – or if footage has been cut to studio recordings with audience roar dubbed on. Were they that good live? At other times, you will hear clearly how different a performance is to the one that you’ve grown familiar with, so that the answer is, quite often, yes!

Eight Days A Week pretty much ends when the touring did, in 1966, although the edited medley of Apple roof top Let It Be performances makes a surprise appearance at the very end, sounding and looking more beautiful than ever before. One hopes that it’s a signpost of things to come, rather than a massive prick-tease, since there’s been twenty-odd years of rumour regarding the re-release of the Let It Be film and session outtakes. Likewise, the edit from the very first Beatles Fan Club Christmas Record that plays over the closing credits: a legitimate, remastered release is long overdue.

Best trainspotter moment: John Lennon in a hotel room noodling on a melodica. Listen carefully: it’s clearly a snippet of what will become, some years down the track, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” But the very best thing, included only in the cinema release (so don’t expect it on the DVD release later this year) is the complete Shea Stadium performance, pieced together from more source material than ever before. It follows directly after the credits. Hopefully this too will form part of a later live project.

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