The Beatles Anthology
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The Beatles Anthology is the name of a documentary series, a series of three albums and a book, all of which focus on the history of the popular rock band The Beatles.
The television specials and video collection
Literally thousands of hours of footage were viewed in consideration for inclusion in the documentary, which originally aired in Britain on ITV, beginning on November 19 1995 for an hour a week until Christmas Eve. The series was produced by Apple Corps and Granada Television.
It appeared in America on ABC as a five-hour miniseries over three nights (November 19-21, 1995). ITV's version of The Beatles Anthology ran 25-30 minutes longer than that screened on US television, with most of that time spent on more complete song sequences. (Interestingly, the American broadcast featured a slightly different version of the video for "Real Love" than that included on the official DVD release.)
All of the surviving Beatles members filmed new interviews to add to older interviews with John Lennon, who was murdered by Mark David Chapman in 1980. The first episode ended with a promotional video for the brand new Beatles track, "Free as a Bird", created from an archive Lennon recording supplied by his widow Yoko Ono.
The entire documentary was released on video, in 1996, as an eight-tape set with additional material not seen in the television specials, clocking in at 10 hours total. The entire set was released worldwide on DVD on April 1, 2003; this differed from the television and VHS releases by featuring new video edits for the song tracks (as previous releases had featured the original music videos), by having newly remixed audio tracks for the songs (in some baffling cases, actually changing them significantly) and by replacing the Century Gothic subtitles with the more generic DVD variant. The DVD release also includes additional material with the mid-nineties Beatles and a video of "Real Love" which many complained was omitted from the VHS set. This, like the other music videos on the set, is not the one that accompanied the original release.
The video release of The Beatles Anthology won a Grammy for best long-form music video. "Free as a Bird" won two further Grammy awards: best short-form music video, and best pop performances by a duo or group.
As a side note, in America, the promotion for ABC's showing of the Beatles Anthology was done heavily, months in advance, with the network calling itself 'A-Beatle-C'.
The albums
To accompany the Anthology series, three double music albums were released, each containing two CDs of never-before-released Beatles material.
Two days after the first television special in the series had aired, Anthology 1 was released to stores, and included music recorded by the Quarry Men, the famous Decca Records audition tapes, and various out-takes and demos from the band's first four albums. The song "Free as a Bird" was included at the very start. 450,000 copies of Anthology 1 were sold in its first day of release, the most sales for an album in a single day ever.
On March 18, 1996, Anthology 2 was released. The second collection included out-takes and demos from the Beatles sessions for Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Especially interesting is the 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.
On October 28, 1996, Anthology 3 was released. The third collection included out-takes and demos from The White Album, Abbey Road and Let It Be.
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 of Klaus Voorman, who also created the album cover for Revolver in 1966. Interestingly, the Anthology covers required Voorman to recreate the cover for Revolver within the collage, to some extent. During the music video for "Free as a Bird", the Anthology collage appears as posters on a shop window as the camera pans quickly across the street. The design also adorned the VHS and DVD releases, again to be properly encountered by laying the cases side-by-side.
The success of the Anthology albums was parodied by the release of The Rutles' Archaeology some months later. This album even included a spoof of "Free as a Bird", entitled "Don't Know Why". In Anthology style, the album included both outtakes from the original Rutles album and new material.
Official Anthology releases
- The Beatles Anthology 1 (Apple, 1995)
- The Beatles Anthology 2 (Apple, 1996)
- The Beatles Anthology 3 (Apple, 1996)
Unofficial Anthology releases
- The Beatles Anthology 4 Advanced Test (Apple (Fake), 1996)
- The Beatles Anthology 5 Advanced Test (Apple (Fake), 1996)
- The Beatles Anthology 6 Advanced Test (Apple (Fake), 1996)
- The Beatles Anthology Plus (Invasion Ulimited, 1997)
- The Beatles Anthology More (OMI, 1998)
- The Beatles Anthology Extra (OMI, 1999)
- The Beatles Anthology 2000 (OMI, 2000)
- The Beatles Anthology Outtakes 1 (Beat Central, 2004)
- The Beatles Anthology Outtakes 2 (Beat Central, 2004)
- The Beatles Anthology Outtakes 3 (Beat Central, 2004)
The book
In October 2000, The Beatles Anthology book was released, which included interviews with all four band members and others involved, plus rare photos. The book went straight to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list.External links
| The Beatles |
|---|
| John Lennon | Paul McCartney | George Harrison | Ringo Starr Pete Best | Stuart Sutcliffe |
| Management |
| Brian Epstein | Allen Klein | Apple Records |
| Production |
| George Martin | Geoff Emerick | Norman Smith | Phil Spector | Abbey Road Studios |
| Official studio albums |
| Please Please Me (1963) | With the Beatles (1963) | A Hard Day's Night (1964) | Beatles for Sale (1964) | Help! (1965) | Rubber Soul (1965) | Revolver (1966) | Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) | Magical Mystery Tour (1967) | The Beatles (1968) | Yellow Submarine (1969) | Abbey Road (1969) | Let It Be (1970) |
| A Hard Day's Night (1964) | Help! (1965) | Magical Mystery Tour (1967) | Yellow Submarine (1968) | Let it Be (1970) |
| History | Lennon-McCartney | Bootlegs | Discography | Anthology | Influence | The Quarrymen | London | Beatlemania | Beatlesque | Fifth Beatle | Paul Is Dead | British Invasion | Apple Corps | Northern Songs | Harrisongs | Startling Music |
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