a comic book looks back on the three weeks of concerts at the Olympia which changed everything

Sixty years ago, in 1964, the Beatles stayed three weeks in Paris to give a series of concerts at the Olympia. This comic tells this little-known episode in the history of the Fab Four, for whom the City of Lights was an enchanted parenthesis, at the dawn of their dazzling global success.

They broke up more than fifty years ago, and yet there always seems to be something new to discover about The Beatles. When it’s not an event documentary series that reshuffles the cards regarding the circumstances of their separation, it’s an exhibition of unpublished photos or the publication of realistic fiction. When it’s not a new piece completed thanks to artificial intelligence, it’s the promise of a series of biopics on each of the members of the group.

What concerns us this time is a comic strip. There were others (notably The Beatles in comics, 2016) but this one focuses on three short weeks during which the Fab Four stayed in Paris, sixty years ago. And what weeks! Those twenty days changed everything, or almost everything: they arrived in the City of Lights as the most popular band in England and left as a cultural phenomenon conquering the world. The Beatles in Paris by Vassilia and Philippe Thirault, Christopher and Degreff, was published on March 6, 2024 by Robinson editions.

Power outage, free-for-all, it was not won

In 1964, from January 16 to February 4, the Beatles were scheduled at the Olympia. Forty concerts, two per evening of around thirty minutes each, are planned in the hall on Boulevard des Capucines. This series of shows was concluded six months in advance, well before the notoriety of John, Paul, George and Ringo suddenly exploded across the Channel.

The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, decided despite everything to honor these concerts, counting on the prestige of Paris to serve as a showcase for his collaborators and make them known internationally. His flair was right, even if the story was already in progress.

However, at first, nothing really goes as planned in the French capital. A power outage and a free-for-all among the photographers tarnishes their first concert, Paul is short of inspiration to compose, Ringo almost misses the first concert…

On the bill between a beginner Sylvie Vartan and the singer Trini Lopez, they struggled the first evenings to conquer the crowds, who preferred the Latin American artist. But as the days go by, the Beatles raise the temperature and madness of the public, especially women.

A well-documented album

In Paris, where John and Paul had already made a much more modest stay a few years earlier, the Four Boys in the Wind were both very dissipated and very busy. They have one photo shoot after another, on the Champs-Elysées and in their hotel room at the George V – the famous pillow fight in their pajamas.

They recorded two versions in German of I want to hold your hand And She Loves You. And, Paul’s lack of inspiration having been short-lived, they also put together the instrumental parts of a new song, Can’t buy me love. Fortunately, because they also had to compose the songs for the film’s soundtrack at the same time A Hard Day’s Night. But what the four friends want above all is to have fun and meet girls.

The authors of this comic have carefully documented themselves, including in the period press and in the archives of Europe 1 radio broadcasts, witnesses of their time in Paris. Which gives a lively album, although a little conventional, which is enhanced by amusing little anecdotes.

We learn, for example, that Ringo Starr, very popular at the time with the fairer sex, almost missed the first concert and literally arrived at full speed… thanks to a private taxi driven by a rally driver. We still discover, among other things, that the group that would change pop forever then fell under the spell of the album of another revolutionary artist: Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

A design in keeping with the spirit of the sixties

As cartoonist Christopher, who has previously worked on Prince, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, notes, “there are several levels of reading in this story. An initiate will find details he does not know, an allusion to future or past events. As for the Beatles neophyte, he will read a beautiful story of friendship.” His simple designs, inspired by clear lines, do not bother with too many details. But they are consistent with the spirit of the sixties which hovers over this album, where we feel the explosion of creativity and the thirst for freedom of a youth in the process of emancipating itself from the stifling shackles of the post-war period. .

We meet some celebrities there, such as Burt Lancaster, Phil Spector, Sylvie Vartan, Johnny Hallyday and the photographer Jean-Marie Périer. On the other hand, we do not see Brigitte Bardot, whom Paul and John have been dying to meet for years. In any case, it was in Paris, at the George V, that the Beatles learned that they were number one for the first time in the United States, with I Want To Hold Your Hand. They then flew to New York, where Beatlemania would experience a meteoric acceleration a few days later, during their American television debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. Paris was for them only a parenthesis before global success: the Beatles never returned to play together in the City of Lights.

“The Beatles in Paris” by Vassilia and Philippe Thirault (screenplay), Christopher (drawing) and Degref (color) was published on March 6, 2024 by Robinson. Please note: plates from this graphic novel are on display until May 6, 2024 at the Marilyn bar and at the Olympia restaurant, bd des capucines in Paris.