A Hard Day's Night: A Conversation with Samira Ahmed
Author Samira Ahmed stops by to discuss about her latest book about The Beatles' first film
Despite having heard the album A Hard Day’s Night an absurd number of times, I’d somehow never watched the identically-named film that the songs were written for. When I found out I was interviewing Samira Ahmed about her book about the film, I knew I had to sit down to watch it. The film, as with everything The Beatles touched, was delightful. I wasn’t sure a book could add to it, though. The film was pretty straightforward.
I was wrong. Across her short volume, journalist and BBC presenter Samira Ahmed reshapes everything you thought you knew about this movie. Not only did A Hard Day’s Night basically invent the music video, but it documented the changing social and gender norms in the western world. Her book is a must read for any Beatles fan.
At the beginning of your book, you note, “With the huge growth in Beatles scholarship in recent years, I was wary of adding another book.” What compelled you to press on even though it feels like everything that there is to say about The Beatles has been said.
I was first introduced to The Beatles as a child via their films. My brother taped their movies off television in 1979 when I was 11. A Hard Day’s Night is a fascinating film because it captures them in the white heat of Beatlemania in Britain just before they go on The Ed Sullivan Show. I wanted to look at how this film captures Britain at that time. It’s not glamorized. You see ordinary trains and ordinary girls. There’s no sense of it being a fantasy. I didn’t think anybody had really looked at the social history side of this film.
Additionally, a few years ago, I discovered the earliest complete recording of The Beatles, called The Stowe Tape. It was a show they played at a school in April 1963. A student secretly recorded the whole concert and shared the tape with me. I did a big story about it on my show. Many people who watched that episode told me that they were fascinated even if they didn’t care about The Beatles. Telling that story requires you to touch on social changes in Britain and the rise of youth culture globally. We are still living in the wake of that.
I always wonder if youth culture will become less important as populations continue to decline around the world.
My favorite scene in A Hard Day’s Night occurs at exactly the midpoint. George wanders into an advertising agency where they are recruiting young people to help market shirts to teens. I think the film captures this sense of how the adult mainstream is trying to monetize youth culture. If you go back and look at the advertisements for bands at the time, they were all very goofy.
The Beatles managed to transcend that commodification. Part of the reason is that their music is still so pure. But they also just had such distinctive personalities and stayed true to themselves. When I meet young people at book signings, I’m always fascinated by how they got into The Beatles. Some were introduced to the group by their parents. Others just came upon them through social media and streaming. People are still falling in love with them.
A Hard Day’s Night has got to be one of very few movies that was profitable before it was released because the album had recouped all film costs before the film even came out.
Yes! Of course, the goal was to sell records. Nobody thought the film would turn into what it did. They just wanted to cash in on this pop group. Most groups didn’t last that long. But the film was profitable before it even hit theaters.
It’s a fun album.
In my view, it’s their greatest album. It’s also interesting that half of the songs aren’t even in the movie. How often does a soundtrack contain songs that don’t make the movie? They just had so many great songs.
At the beginning of the book, you argue that A Hard Day’s Night “was in fact a kind of cinematic Big Bang, shaping entire genre of screen entertainment: sitcoms, rock band films and spawning a new form—the pop video, for which in 1984 MTV gave Richard Lester a special Vanguard Award.” Let’s talk about this quote piece by piece. How did A Hard Day’s Night change sitcom television?
The most obvious impact is The Monkees, which is essentially a sitcom replica of A Hard Day’s Night. In his book Funny or Die, the comedy writer Joel Morris argues that the sitcom requires a patriarch, matriarch, craftsmen, and clown. A Hard Day’s Night has all of those things. John is the patriarch, Paul is the matriarch, George is the craftsman, and Ringo is the clown.
Comedy was also a big part of their lives. They wanted to work with director Richard Lester because they loved his film The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film. The Beatles were also natural comedians, though. Many of the contemporary reviews note how funny they are.
I think the biggest reason that The Beatles have stood the test of time is that their music still sounds so fresh. But their personalities are a big reason too. Decades later, those personalities are quite compelling.
Absolutely. It’s also important that they had a legitimate sitcom star, Wilfrid Brambell, in A Hard Day’s Night. (He was in Steptoe and Son, which was remade in the US as Sanford and Son.) His presence was almost a statement that The Beatles had entered the world of adults. This wasn’t just for kids.
Now, let’s talk rock band films. There are so many rock band films that it’s easy to think they were always around, but you contend that A Hard Day’s Night essentially birthed the genre. Is that really the case?
