Martin Scorsese’s savage first impression of The Beatles: “A nonsense novelty act”
The ‘Beatles or Stones?’ debate has become as endless as it has nauseating, but it wouldn’t be ridiculous for everyone to assume that Martin Scorsese would take Mick and Keith over John and Paul on any day of the week, and twice on a Sunday.
After all, the legendary director and the Rolling Stones have become firm friends and collaborators, with the filmmaker helming the Shine a Light documentary and using their music to soundtrack several iconic scenes, from ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ in Mean Streets to ‘Gimme Shelter’ in The Departed.
They’re the closest thing Scorsese has to a favourite band of all time, but it’s not an either/or situation. He directed the George Harrison doc, Living in the Material World, and he wouldn’t dream of being dragged into the eternal discourse surrounding which of the two iconic bands can be called better than the other.
That said, while the Academy Award-winning veteran was instantly enamoured with the Stones from the second he first heard them, it took him a little longer to get on the same wavelength as the Fab Four. Not by much, though, but he wasn’t particularly impressed the first time they became a blip on his radar.
“They were touted as kind of an oddity because they had hair that was long, and the press couldn’t wait to attack them,” Scorsese explained to IndieWire. “We didn’t take them that seriously. There was an attitude we all had of, ‘Yeah, show us.'” Still, he’d heard the buzz surrounding the Beatles, and he had an inkling they would make a splash in the United States.
However, he admitted that he’d written them off as “a nonsense novelty act” until the first time he heard ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ on the radio. The all-time great was gearing up for a day of classes at New York University’s film school, and he suddenly realised that maybe he’d been too harsh on the quartet.
“I heard the first few beats, and I just stood there. I was late for class,” he revealed. “I listened, and I admitted to myself, ‘That’s really good’, and as soon as I got to NYU, I was telling everybody, ‘This is not some rip-off; this is for real’. There was something joyous about it, and I don’t think we can ever really describe the uplifting effect of not only their musical ability, but the writing and the lyrics.”
Scorsese had a feeling that change wasn’t only coming, but needed, in the wake of John F Kennedy’s assassination. “The country was ready for something new,” he suggested, and The Beatles were the right band at the right time, instigating what he described as “an extraordinary change that occurred in the year of the country after the disaster of the assassination.”
Less than three months after the sitting president had been killed, John, Paul, George, and Ringo made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. It might sound trite to say that the rest was history, but it was.
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