Movies and Rock - a Playlist from Daddy Cool

This playlist is shining a spotlight on the Beatles and other artists of their era whose material was featured in movies.

Hollywood had made musical films for half a century almost. The great Bugsby Berkley extravaganzas, Broadway shows turned into great movies, such as my favourite, South Pacific. Cheap fad movies that played on new cultural norms, Like Don't Knock the Rock and Don't Knock the Twist. I admit that I saw them all. However, The Beatles and the growing post-war youth market, was not captured very well until the Beatles first film, Hard Days Night. London-based, American director Richard Lester hit the nail right on the head; It truly captured Beatlemania. Many other movies followed that were aimed at teenagers, not  Hollywood's idea of a "teenager" which was a 30-year old Doris Day saying "Golly Gee". This playlist featuring films of the Beatles era & Beyond has to begin with  Hard Day's Night. The Beatles first film.

Hard Day's Night, is followed by Ko Ko Mo from The Beach Boys. It is not the title of a film but is from the soundtrack of a young Tom Cruise movie, Cocktail. It was released as a single and topped the charts. Their first big hit for a decade.

SONGS

Hard Day's Night .- The Beatles

Ko Ko Mo - The Beach Boys

Probably the defining rock festival for my generation was Woodstock. The promoters knew they had something special and planned to film it, as it happened. They commissioned Joni Mitchell to write a song to play over the credits. A month before I emigrated to Canada, I saw Joni perform at the Royal Festival Hall on London's South  Bank art institutions. She premiered it there. Her version is a simple piano driven song. She put it out on her Ladies of the Canyon LP. Before she played it, she mentioned that the producers did not feel her version fitted the wild rock atmosphere of the event so were having it re-recorded. Of course, when I arrived in Toronto, and the film Woodstock came out that spring, I could see their point. Here is CSN & Y's version from the film followed by the Rolling Stones' Gimmie Shelter. It is the title song from their film Gimmie Shelter by The Mayles, which captured the disastrous Altamont concert in California where a spectator is killed by the security crew. It is a haunting film, and this tune fits it well, too.

Then,  Help!  the title song from the Beatles second film.

SONGS

Woodstock - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Gimmie Shelter - Rolling Stones.

Help! -The Beatles

Riding on the wave of the British invasion were Anglo-Australian group The Seekers. This was their big hit, which was the theme  from the film Georgy Girl which starred British actress Lynn Redgrave. Some film producers saw the extra bucks to be made from movies with a hit song included which could lead to a popular soundtrack LP. One huge movie in winter of 1969-70 was Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. Producer John Foreman and Director Roy George Hill commissioned Burt Bacharach & Hal David to compose a song that is incorporated into the movies' narrative as an idyllic sequence that foreshadows the 2 protagonists need to move on and get back to their old lifestyle.  Raindrops Keeping Falling on my Head by B.J. Thomas is the resulting tune.

SONGS

Georgy Girl - The Seekers

Raindrops Keeping Falling on my Head - B.J. Thomas

Windmills of your Mind is the tune from Canadian Director Norman Jewison's  blockbuster film The Thomas Crown Affair.  Dusty Springfield had a hit with it. She is followed by the theme song, Mrs. Robinson from Simon & Garfunkel which is in the iconic 1960's movie, The Graduate ; One of the defining cultural events of the baby boomers' life.

SONGS

Windmills of your Mind - Dusty Springfield

Mrs. Robinson - Simon & Garfunkel

The movie hit of summer 1967 was an odd British one, To Sir with Love starring American actor Sidney Poitier. The theme song was sung by Scots gal Lulu. It was released as a  single and it topped the charts. The Beatles 3rd film was a weird animated one based on the 1966 hit song Yellow Submarine from the Revolver LP. The film  and its soundtrack were released in 1968. It was panned at the time but is now loved, as  the Boomers tend to hold memories that are tinged with rose-tinted nostalgia.

SONGS

To Sir with Love - Lulu

Yellow Submarine - The Beatles

The following are movies that  tried to cash-in on the British invasion and featuring other popular bands playing themselves on a journey to musical success. All have hit songs in their title. Mrs. Brown You've got a Lovely Daughter by Herman's Hermits. I saw it recently on Turner Classic Movies channel. I assure you this film is not a classic. Ah, well, then Catch Us if You Can from the Dave Clark 5 and  Ferry Across the Mersey featuring Gerry & the Pacemakers. Both from movies with those titles.

SONGS

Mrs. Brown You've got a Lovely Daughter - Herman's Hermits

Catch Us if You Can - Dave Clark 5

 Ferry Across the Mersey - Gerry & the Pacemakers

What's New Pussy Cat was a 1965 film cashing in on the world's, but especially America's, curiosity for all things British, and over the top action of James Bond movies The hit song is by Tom Jones. In their early days, the Beatles featured film tunes in their live sets and 2 were on their first LP, Please, Please Me. One tune is Taste of Honey from the British film of the same name, and Til There was You from the 1962 film The Music Man. 

SONGS

What's New Pussy Cat - Tom Jones

Taste of Honey - the Beatles

Til There was You - The Beatles

The 4th film the Beatles owed  the studio  was planned as a movie about reading for a live concert and the concert itself. However, internal group strife resulted in a cut-and-paste movie from the hours of  recording in the studio instead and the previous  movie idea was aborted. However, the idea of a concert film resurrects itself  towards the end, where the Beatles perform 5 songs Live on the rooftop of their Saville Row HQ of Apple Corp. The film was  called Let it be, which was also a single released in March 1970 before the movie came out. While the Beatles did win an Oscar for the soundtrack, in 1973, Paul McCartney, now with his band Wings wanted an Oscar for himself and produced the Theme song for the James Bond film, Live and Let Die. He lost out in the Oscar stakes to The Way We Were (Evergreen.)    

SONGS

Live & Let Die - Wings

Let it Be - The  Beatles

Enjoy this playlist from Mik & Daddy Cool