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.
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[edit] The documentary series
Approximately coinciding with the release of the "Free as a Bird" single and Anthology 1 album (the first of three double-CD albums), The Beatles Anthology series of documentaries was broadcast on television in 1995. The series, which was made over five years of planning and production (1,760 minutes),[citation needed] collected together numerous film clips and interviews to present a complete history of the band from The Beatles' own personal perspectives. The series was later released on VHS, laserdisc and as a boxed set of five DVDs.
[edit] 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 Quarrymen, 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. The Beatles' original drummer Pete Best, fired by the band in 1962 before they hit it big, received his first substantial Beatles royalties from this album, for the inclusion of early tracks on which he played. (The courtesy did not extend to the cover art - an early group photo in the cover collage featured a strategically-placed rip, revealing the image of Ringo Starr in place of Best).
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 Voormann, who also created the album cover for Revolver in 1966. The Anthology covers required Voormann to recreate the cover for Revolver within the collage, to some extent.[citation needed] 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.
[edit] 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.<ref>The New York Times Best Seller List - October 22, 2000. From [1]</ref>
[edit] References
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