Can there be anything left to say about the most exhaustively documented band in history? This is always the question when a new Beatles project emerges, however welcome it may be. Perhaps surprisingly, more than five decades since their dissolution, the likes of Ian Leslie’s book John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs (published earlier this year) and Peter Jackson’s immersive 2021 fly-on-the-wall doc Get Back proved that the answer is strongly in the affirmative.
- READ MORE: Giles Martin on giving new life to The Beatles’ ‘Anthology’: “It reveals how human they were”
But what about a dusted-off documentary series from 1995, which purported to tell the ‘definitive’ tale of the Fab Four from their early days at Liverpool’s Cavern Club to the monumental Abbey Road, the final album they recorded together? 30 years on, could the rereleased Beatles Anthology be even more definitive if, say, it were restored, remastered and expanded from eight episodes to nine? How about if that final episode featured previously unseen footage of Paul, Ringo and George reunited for the series’ composition in the mid-‘90s?
In short, the answer is mostly no – even if you haven’t watched Anthology before, you’ll have seen many of these clips and heard some variation of its stories. Yes, the lads’ unbreakable chemistry was forged in the fires of their chaotic Hamburg gigs in their early ‘60s. Yes, it’s claimed that the crime rate plummeted across the US when the Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, as even hardened criminals were transfixed by the loveable mop tops (a myth long since debunked). And, yes, it turns out that they did have a hard time during the recording sessions that became Let It Be.
Also in short, though… who cares? There is something hypnotic about seeing these fabled landmarks roll into each other as one grand narrative. All over again, you’re left awed by what four ordinary lads achieved in eight short years of releasing music.
Anthology dates back to around 1970, when Neil Aspinall, who ran The Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, put together a version comprised entirely of archive footage. This sat on the shelf for a couple of decades, until the surviving Beatles were ready to give interviews. “I think it’s been nice for us and the public to just forget about The Beatles for a while,” George admits in the ninth episode.
The visual remastering might make a difference on a flashy TV but generally doesn’t add much on a standard laptop screen, although some of the footage – such as a slightly uncanny clip of the Fabs onstage in black-and-white, which opens each episode – is noticeably sharper. Anthology has a somewhat stitched-together quality, given that the archive clips are interspersed by contemporary footage of Paul, Ringo and George seemingly filmed wherever they happened to be at the time. At one point, we’re treated to the enjoyably odd image of Macca chatting away to camera through the window of a sailboat.
This entire rerelease, though, is more than justified by the genuinely eye-opening final episode, which sees the lads work up ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’, the Lennon demos put out as Beatles tracks alongside the original documentary. There is, Macca hints, a third that they may complete someday. Indeed, the elegiac ‘Now And Then’ was famously finally released in 2023. “With The Beatles,” as Paul says, “you’ve gotta watch out. There’s always a surprise somewhere along the line.”
‘The Beatles Anthology’ is streaming now on Disney+