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The Beatles Anthology is amultimedia retrospective project consisting of atelevision documentary, a three-volume set of double albums, and a book describing the history ofthe Beatles. Beatles membersPaul McCartney,George Harrison andRingo Starr participated in the making of the works, which are sometimes referred to collectively as theAnthology project, whileJohn Lennon appears in archival interviews.
The documentary series was first broadcast in November 1995, with expanded versions released onVHS andLaserDisc in 1996 and onDVD in 2003. The documentary used interviews with the Beatles and their associates to narrate the history of the band as seen through archival footage and performances. TheAnthology book, released in 2000, paralleled the documentary in presenting the group's history through quotes from interviews.
The initial volume of the album set (Anthology 1) was released the same week of the documentary's airdate, with the subsequent two volumes (Anthology 2 andAnthology 3) released in 1996. They included unreleased performances and outtakes presented in roughly chronological order, along with two new songs based on demo tapes recorded by Lennon after the group broke up: "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love", both produced byJeff Lynne.
Approximately coinciding with the release of the "Free as a Bird" single andAnthology 1 album (the first of three double-CD albums),The Beatles Anthology series of documentaries was broadcast onITV in the United Kingdom andABC television in the United States in 1995. TheAnthology series takes a form similar to that of theAnthology book, by being a series of first-person accounts by the Beatles themselves, with no external "objective" narration. Footage in theAnthology series featuresvoice-over recordings of all four Beatles to push the narrative of the story, with contributions from their producer, road manager and others. As well as telling their story through archival footage,Paul McCartney,George Harrison andRingo Starr appear in interview segments recorded exclusively for the series;John Lennon appears only in historic archival footage.
The series, which included over 5000 hours of planning and production, is composed of numerous film clips and interviews that present a complete history of the band from the Beatles' own personal perspectives. When it aired on ABC, the series comprised six hour-long programs, aired on three nights in November 1995. The series was later released as eight expanded episodes on VHS, laserdisc and as a boxed set of five DVDs (4 discs with 2 episodes apiece and a disc of extras).
Air dates onABC:
Part 1 of the series drew 17 million households,[1] meaning an average of 27.3 million viewers,[2] which was much better than usual for ABC at the time, but behind most broadcasts ofFriends onNBC,[1] which in its second season was averaging 29.4 million viewers per episode.
In promoting the series, ABC identified itself as "A-Beatles-C" – an homage to the mid-1960s "77 W-A-Beatles-C" call sign of the network's flagship NYC AM radio station – and several of the network's prime-time sitcoms replaced their regular opening credit themes with Beatles tracks.
To accompany theAnthology series, three albums were issued, each containing two CDs, two cassette tapes or three vinyl LPs of mostly never-before-released Beatles material (the exceptions being the Tony Sheridan-era material), although many of the tracks had appeared onbootlegs for many years prior.
Two days after the first television special in the series had aired,Anthology 1 was released to stores, and included music recorded bythe Quarrymen, the famousDecca Recordsaudition tapes, and various out-takes and demos fromPlease Please Me,With the Beatles,A Hard Day's Night andBeatles for Sale. It also included the song "Lend Me Your Comb", omitted from the collectionLive at the BBC, released the previous year (1994). The song "Free as a Bird" was included at the very start. Some 450,000 copies ofAnthology 1 were sold in its first day of release, the most sales for an album in a single day ever. The band's first drummerPete Best, replaced by Ringo Starr in 1962 before the Beatles recorded professionally for EMI, received his first substantial Beatles royalties from this album, for the inclusion of early demo tracks on which he played.
Anthology 2 was released on 17 March 1996. The second collection presented out-takes and demos from the Beatles' sessions forHelp!,Rubber Soul,Revolver,Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band andMagical Mystery Tour. These included selected early demos and takes for Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever", previously available only to bootleg collectors. The new song "Real Love" – which, like "Free as a Bird", was based on an unfinished Lennon recording – was also included in the two-CD collection.
Anthology 3 was released on 28 October 1996. The third collection featured out-takes and demos fromThe Beatles ("White Album"),Let It Be andAbbey Road, as well as several songs from Harrison and McCartney which later became post-Beatle tracks.
Mark Lewisohn wrote the liner notes that appear in the booklets accompanying all three audio sets. These notes, including the date and location of each session or appearance, were based on his own extensive research.
The three album covers, when laid side-by-side, become one long painted collage of various peeling posters and album covers representing the different stages of the Beatles' career. This was the work ofKlaus Voormann, who also created the album cover forRevolver in 1966. TheAnthology covers required Voormann to recreate elements of his cover forRevolver within the collage. During the music video for "Free as a Bird", theAnthology collage appears as posters on a shop window as the camera pans quickly across the street. The design also adorned the VHS,laserdisc and DVD releases, again to be properly encountered by laying the cases side by side. Upon the release ofAnthology 3,HMV stores made available a limited edition cardboard sleeve designed to hold all three CD volumes of which each side of the sleeve make up half of the collage.
All three albums were made digitally available on theiTunes Store on 14 June 2011, alongside a newAnthology Highlights album which featured a selection of tracks from all three albums and reached number 184 onBillboard's United StatesTop Current Albums chart.[3]
In October 2000,The Beatles Anthology book was released, which included interviews with all four band members and others involved, plus rare photos. Many of the interviews quoted are from those featured in the documentary films. The book is designed as a large-format hardback, with imaginative artwork throughout, and several visually vibrant and colourful spreads featuring graphics relevant to the proceeding chronology, photographic arrays and a variety of text styles and layouts. The book went straight to the top ofThe New York Times bestsellers list.[4] In 2002, the book was released as a large-format paperback.[5]
During early 1995, as work onThe Beatles Anthology continued,Yoko Ono and McCartney recorded anavant-garde piece called "Hiroshima Sky Is Always Blue". Ono provided vocals and McCartney played bass, whileSean Lennon,Linda McCartney, and McCartney's children played various instruments. The piece was broadcast on Japanese public television in memory of the 50th anniversary of theatomic bombing of Hiroshima.[6]
The track "Carnival of Light", recorded during theSgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions, was intended to be released on theAnthology 2 album, but was vetoed by George Harrison.[7]
It was reported that McCartney, Harrison and Starr worked on a new composition called "All for Love" in March 1995, intended as a track onAnthology 3, but the effort was abandoned.[8] No version of the song has reached the public.
McCartney, Harrison, Starr, and Jeff Lynne attempted a full band recording of Lennon's song "Now and Then" using his demo vocals, intending it to anchorAnthology 3. The poor fidelity and excessive ambient noise of the original tape proved too difficult to alleviate with contemporary digital equipment, and the song was abandoned. George Harrison was dismissive of the quality of the song, calling it "fucking rubbish".[9] The song was replaced as the opening track onAnthology 3 with theWhite Album outtake "A Beginning". In 2023, McCartney, Starr andGiles Martin refurbished and completed the track, usingartificial intelligence to extricate Lennon's vocal from the demo tape, and released it as a "final Beatles song", both as a single and as a bonus track on the expanded edition of the1967-1970 compilation album.[10][11]
Each of the threeAnthology albums was accompanied by a promotional CD sampler sent to radio stations shortly before the official release dates. These CDs have since become highly sought collector's items. Even rarer is a vinyl version of the sampler forAnthology 2, which was only sent to college radio stations and featured a different cover (though the contents were the same).
In October 1996 there was a strictly limited release fromEMI, a slip case cover to house all three CD volumes, which have since become extremely rare, fetching high prices among collectors.
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The success of theAnthology albums was parodied by the release of theRutles'Archaeology some months later. Delays in the release of the third volume of the Beatles' series ultimately meant that the Rutles' parody arrived in shops on the same day as its inspiration.
"Weird Al" Yankovic parodiedThe Beatles Anthology in anAl TV special. He said he had a copy of a fictionalAnthology 17, which he claimed would not be available to the public for a while. He played for the audience a track of Paul McCartney brushing his teeth and Ringo Starr shaving beforeThe Ed Sullivan Show. Yankovic also considered parodying the album's single "Free as a Bird" as "Gee, I'm a Nerd", and requested McCartney's permission for the parody.[12][13][14] McCartney had no problem with the parody; however, since "Free as a Bird" was written by John Lennon, he deferred the decision to Yoko Ono, who was not comfortable with the idea.
The Beatles Anthology was also parodied on the short-livedDana Carvey Show, which was being aired onABC around the same time thatAnthology was being televised on the network.
OnLate Night with Conan O'Brien the host had the remaining Beatles adding music and doing backup singing to a fictitious vocal track of John Lennon'sanswering machine message.
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