If you're a regular readah of this dribble, then you will doubtless be able to recite large sections of the script for a Hard Day's Night verbatim. The film, a canny move whether by luck or design, represents the first real point where "serious" critics began to catch on that there was more to all this than just piss-covered seats in provincial auditoria.
Anyway, the bit where they break free of rehearsing and, to be blunt, tit-about in a field to the strains of Can't Buy Me Love, is a zeitgeist defining bit o' celluloid. That being so (and it is), I finally made it down to Hounslow, resolutely non-piss-covered copy of the Beatles' London in hand, to see what remains of one of the principal locations for that sequence: Thornbury Playing Fields.
The answer, at least as far as the HDN locale goes, is not a great deal (predictably). Click on the pic above for a better look: housing now covers the area.
Luckily, the iconic (in this context, and this context only) Permutit House still looms over the location, and thus makes orientation fairly easy. Here's Permutit (as it is apparently called) close up:
The mock heli-pad, upon which they titted, was situated somewhere near the last little bit of remaining green:
Apart from this bit, that is:
Speaking of the "white heat of Beatlemania", anyone with an interest in such things should see the following footage HERE: proto HDN (note the way John snarls at the reporter who isn't listening to his answers) and fantastic performance footage from Cheltenham towards the end of 1963. Fookin' FAB! (And yet another doff o' the cap to the Beatles' London - also fookin' FAB!)
Hounslow! Now we're talking... until today the only interesting thing about Hounslow (at least to me) was that my auntie used to live there. Suddenly it's a built-over film set. Fab and gear.
ReplyDeleteLove the blog.