Intimate documentary captures the Beatles goofing around as they take America by storm in 1964

NEW YORK — Likely most people have seen iconic footage of the Beatles performing on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” But how many have seen Paul McCartney during that same U.S. trip feeding seagulls off his hotel balcony? That moment — as well as George Harrison and John Lennon goofing around by exchanging their jackets — are part of the Disney+ documentary “Beatles ’64,” an intimate look at the English band’s first trip to America that uses rare and newly restored footage. “It’s just this incredible gift of time and technology to be able to see it now with the decades of time stripped away so that you really feel like you’re there.” “Beatles ’64” leans into footage of the 14-day trip filmed by documentarians Albert and David Maysles, who left behind 11 hours of the Fab Four goofing around in New York’s Plaza hotel or traveling. The documentary coincides with the release of a box set of vinyl albums collecting the band’s seven U.S. albums released in ’64 and early ’65 — “Meet The Beatles!,” “The Beatles’ Second Album,” “A Hard Day’s Night”, ”Something New,” “The Beatles’ Story,” “Beatles ’65” and “The Early Beatles.” They had been out of print on vinyl since 1995. As McCartney says in the documentary: “Maybe America needed something like the Beatles to lift it out of mourning and just sort of say ‘Life goes on.’”