Doc Reveals The Beatles Refused To Play Segregated Clubs

(Radio.com) Ron Howard directed the forthcoming documentary about the Beatles' touring years, Eight Days A Week, and in going through archival footage he discovered an interesting point about the band: they refused to play in segregated clubs.

McCartney admits not remembering that stipulation because it's been over 50 years since they demanded it, but upon seeing footage of the Beatles' riders it very clearly states that they wouldn't have anything to do with venues that treated black listeners differently. "It jogs all the memories," McCartney told Los Angeles Times about watching the documentary. "That's one of the joys about seeing the film."

Speaking about their stance on racial equality, he said, "One of the great things for me was all the civil rights things that we'd always naturally had an empathy with, just because we had loads of black friends and of all our [musical] heroes, many of them were black. To see in the film that we actually put it in our contracts, we didn't remember that. I was very impressed with that. It was very cool." Read more here.

Beatles Music, DVDs, Books and more Beatles T-shirts and Posters More Beatles News Share this article Related Stories George Harrison Early Beatles-Era Futurama Guitar Fetches $1.27 Million Lucinda Williams Shares Her Take On Beatles Classic 'Something' Beatles' Abbey Road Console Goes Up For Sale Beatles Legend Ringo Starr Shares First Song From His Debut Country Album The Beatles' 1964 U.S. Albums Collected For New Mono Vinyl Box Set & LP Releases