It was thirty years ago that Apple brought us The Beatles’ Anthology.
This consisted of a coffee table book, a multi-part tv series and some music.
The music was in the form of three double CDs or three triple LPs.
The music was mostly alternate takes or rehearsals of known songs over the band’s career, some archive stuff and a number of live recordings.
It’s an interesting listen, but not something you would want to listen to often, and there was some complaints about the way in which it had been cobbled together and that it is somehow a bit dishonest.
No matter.
The band’s big albums, Revolver, Sgt Pepper, The Beatles and Abbey Road got big box sets, with various versions and remixes of the original album, multi-discs of extras and outtakes and a fancy book and stuff. Again, the extras are interesting but you’d maybe listen once or twice.
There are some corrections and additions to this. The information seems to be changing and is rather vague.
It is said that Giles Martin has remixed the music (you know, boosting Paul’s bass to dominate everything). This seems to be true for some songs on the tv show, but not the actual CDs or LPs, so they will be remastered but essentially the same as released before.
The versions of Free as a Bird and Real Love have been reprocessed to make them sound more in line with Now and Then, you know, digital and processed.
The last side on the 12 LP set features just those three songs, all released before and a total running time of about 11 minutes.
There is no indication of the running time of the last episode of the tv show, beyond it shows George, Ringo and Paul working on the new songs. It could just be 10 minutes. If you don’t have Disney+, you may need to consider if it is worth buying it.