David Lynch Remembers Attending the Beatles’ First American Concert in 1964

Though his movies may have ben­e­fit­ed great­ly from for­eign audi­ences and back­ers, David Lynch was one of the most thor­ough­ly Amer­i­can of all film­mak­ers. “Born Mis­soula, MT,” declared his Twit­ter bio, yet one nev­er real­ly asso­ciates him with a par­tic­u­lar place in the Unit­ed States (at least no extant one). From Mon­tana, the Lynch fam­i­ly moved to Ida­ho, then Wash­ing­ton, then North Car­oli­na, then Vir­ginia. The tim­ing of that last stint proved cul­tur­al­ly for­tu­itous indeed: liv­ing in the city of Alexan­dria, the eigh­teen-year-old Lynch was close enough to the nation’s cap­i­tal to attend the very first con­cert the Bea­t­les played in North Amer­i­ca, at the Wash­ing­ton Col­i­se­um on Feb­ru­ary 11, 1964.

“I was into rock and roll music, main­ly Elvis Pres­ley.” Lynch recalls this unsur­pris­ing fact in the clip above (which would have been among the last inter­views he gave before his death a year ago) from Bea­t­les ’64, the Mar­tin Scors­ese-pro­duced doc­u­men­tary on the Fab Four’s first U.S. tour.

“I didn’t have any idea how big this event was. And it was in a gigan­tic place where they had box­ing match­es. The Bea­t­les were in the box­ing ring. It was so loud, you can’t believe. Girls shud­der­ing, cry­ing, scream­ing their heart out. It was phe­nom­e­nal.” That deaf­en­ing crowd noise fig­ures into most every account of the group’s Beat­le­ma­nia-era shows — and played a deci­sive role in their per­ma­nent retreat into the stu­dio a cou­ple of years lat­er.

Lynch sure­ly would have under­stood the desire for artis­tic explo­ration and con­trol that drove the Bea­t­les’ con­cen­tra­tion on mak­ing records. Even the sen­si­bil­i­ties of his work and theirs had some­thing in com­mon, exhibit­ing as they both did the unlike­ly com­bi­na­tion of pop­u­lar­i­ty and exper­i­men­ta­tion.  Some­how, David Lynch’s films and the Bea­t­les’ albums could ven­ture into bewil­der­ing obscu­ri­ty and sen­ti­men­tal kitsch with­out los­ing coher­ence or crit­i­cal respect. And dare one imag­ine that the expe­ri­ence of wit­ness­ing the Amer­i­can debut of what would become the most influ­en­tial rock band of all time has giv­en Lynch his appre­ci­a­tion — evi­dent in his movies, but also his own record­ings — for the pow­er of music, which he calls “one of the most fan­tas­tic things”? Even if not, it must have been, well… sur­re­al.

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks’ “Love Theme”

When the Bea­t­les Refused to Play Before Seg­re­gat­ed Audi­ences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)

David Lynch Directs a New Music Video for Dono­van

Watch the Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

The Wide-Rang­ing Cre­ative Genius of David Lynch (RIP): Dis­cov­er His Films, Music Videos, Car­toons, Com­mer­cials, Paint­ings, Pho­tog­ra­phy & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.