This 2018 video-lecture is the first in Freiman's "second season" of Deconstructing the Beatles talks, following the quartet devoted to each of their biggest mid-period albums, which rolled out in 2017.
As always, Freiman begins with a quiz, then moves briskly through the milieu and childhoods of the three boys who would become the core of the Quarrymen, John's secondary school band, in the summer of 1957. There's a brief, and understandably poor, but still astonishing tape clip of John and his band playing a church hall fete on July 6, 1957 - the day he would meet Paul.
Freiman provides plenty of other photos of people and locations, audio and video clips, and wonderful trivia. There are also audio clips of the music the boys grew up with, or were about to overtake, starting with Tommy Steele's "Rock with the Caveman" (1956). He reminds us how hard the band worked at its craft in Hamburg, playing six to eight hours a day, fueled by cigarettes and Preludin, an amphetamine.
Freiman closes with some great video footage of the Beatles live, playing "Some Other Guy" at the Cavern Club on Aug. 22, 1962. They're spiffed up -- Brian Epstein has gotten them out of leather and into white long-sleeved shirts, ties, and sweaters -- but Ringo's on drums (barely a week on board), their first recording sessions with George Martin at EMI/Parlophone are just weeks away, and you can see the magic they're about to spring on the world.
It's tough to rate a show like this, because hardcore fans of the band would automatically give it a 10, but folks with a more nodding acquaintance of the Sixties icons might rate it more like a 5 or 6.
