The Beatles Live--Ready, Steady, Go!

The Beatles Live--Ready, Steady, Go! was recorded on video in 1964 for the British television show, Ready, Steady Go!. The video itself streaks in at approximately twenty minutes, and pretty accurately depicts the electricity that this band created in concert.
The Beatles literally work themselves and their audience into a frenzy in inspiring the obsessive insanity which the world came to know as Beatlemania.

The producers of the television show must have had some idea of the excitement that the Beatles could instill into an audience, because they set the stage up to create a sense of crowding. John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison are in a semicircle, actually facing the drummer, Ringo Starr, and the the crowd is packed in tightly around them. There are also three-tiered balconies which surround the stage, and needless to say, those balconies are filled with fans too.

The concert begins with each Beatle singing a song--John Lennon sings Twist And Shout in his raspiest, most suggestive voice, followed by the shy and adolescent George Harrison offering up an enthusiastic version of Roll Over Beethoven. Ringo Starr chips in with his unaffected delivery of a song that John and Paul originally wrote for the Rolling Stones--I Wanna Be Your Man. Paul McCartney finishes the introduction with a primal impersonation of Little Richard by singing Long Tall Sally. Throughout this four-song introduction, the crowd is screaming, gyrating and just plain going nuts!

Tha band stops for a moment, and Paul intoduces a medley consisting of some of their biggest hits at the time. The medley includes Love Me Do, Please Please Me, From Me To You, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and Can't Buy Me Love. It's obvious that some of the music and film are spliced and edited, but the video and music still retain the live, uncanned flavor.

The end this brief concert, the Beatles do their version of the Iseley Brothers' classic Shout--this video is the only place that I know of that the Beatles ever recorded this song, so I guess that this makes the video a rarity, just for that reason. I don't know of any other Beatles album, collection or compilation that contains this tune--if any of you do, let me know--I'd like to track it down.

Each Beatle takes a turn singing lead on Shout, but it's John Lennon who steals the show by singing "I'm fookin' shoutin' now!" over and over (How this got by the censors, I'll never know!). The band works the crowd into an even bigger frenzy before stopping with John intoning the words "the end"

The only criticism I have of this video is that it is a little dated. You can look at the clothing and hairstyles and pretty well peg the date in the mid-60's very easily. What makes this video worth owning is the taste of Beatlemania it gives the viewer--by seeing and hearing this band play live before an audience, you can see just what type of impact these performers had upon a crowd. They inspired Beatlemania, an entertainment oddity that the world is not likely to see equalled ever again.