The Beatles Anthology - A Retrospective

I doubt if the Conan bit is on YouTube because the Beatles bit was only a minute or two long, sandwiched between other silly bits.

 

That and NBC would yank it if they found it because they only want people to watch their programs on a dead medium and old clips never to be seen again.

 

NBC pull any Leno or Conan clip from youtube they find. Same with their other shows aired on their network.

Comedy Central is the same with Colbert, Daily show and South park, but they have their shows avaialbel for streaming on their sites.

 

Haha, working with Phil Spector again? Not a chance in hell For those familiar with the Lost lennon Tapes series there's a slew of better demos and outtakes that could have been used. Yoko herself said she gave them the songs SHE wanted them to use. She surely didn't make it easy on them. It's obvious she should have given them many more to choose from, including multiple performances of the songs so they could best utilize John's parts. She really limited them in this regard. That being said ANY acoustic guitar demo would have been preferable to that lousy Dakota piano.
More than a year ago Yoko was asked about Paul and Ringo finishing Now & then and she said she wouldn't necessarily be against it, but that neither one of them had called HER about it. A rather telling little remark. Ron

 

Let's keep things moving so we can get through the live tracks as I know these are the least interesting:

1. "She Loves You" (Live at the Royal Variety Show) [Mono]
2. "Till There Was You" (Live at the Royal Variety Show) [Mono] (Meredith Willson)
3. "Twist and Shout" (Live at the Royal Variety Show) [Mono] (Russell-Medley)





4. "This Boy" (Live on The Morecambe and Wise Show) [Mono]
5. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" (Live on The Morecambe and Wise Show) [Mono]
6. "Boys, what I was thinking ..." (Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise speaking to The Beatles)
7. "Moonlight Bay" (Live on The Morecambe and Wise Show) [Mono] (Madden-Wenrich)

From Mark Lewisohn notes:
Asked in 1994 to name his favourite of the many television programmes the Beatles had appeared on, Paul McCartney scarcely hesitated in responding The Morecombe And Wise Show.

 

disc 2 of vol. 1 gets off to a pretty bad start. i don't want to hear another live "till there was you" and "moonlight bay" doesn't work w/o the video.

 

I love this song... I thought it was Elvis Costello the first time I heard it.

 

Exactly. I love watching the video of Moonlight Bay on the Anthology. But why on earth put it on the CD?

 

Can't believe I missed this thread... rather than re-trace everyone's steps, I'll just jump in here. (I'm sure other thoughts will leak out as I go...)

I understand the griping about a lot of the live stuff on volume 1, but to me things like the Royal Variety Show are essential bits of Beatles history, and I'm happy to have them on CD. I'm a sucker for George's playing (and solo) on "Till There Was You," so I'll take each and every live version Apple sees fit to release. Of course, John's "rattle your jewelry" crack is iconic, so that's not "wasting" space on the CD for me either.

Even during the heady rush of 1994-1996, I never saw the Anthology CDs as "albums" in the "gee whiz, let's play that new Beatles album" sense. They are grab bags of tracks -- take what you like, and fill in the blanks in the Beatles' story. Some of the Decca tracks, and things like "How Do You Do It" or "Besame Mucho" may not be the greatest tracks ever, but I like them, because they answer the question, "How did they get from the Sheridan session to 'Love Me Do'?"

I basically poached the Anthology CDs for my Beatles comps, interspersing the outtakes with the superior released versions; it's easy that way to overlook their shortcomings as "albums" -- although nothing can excuse some of the mixing and editing decisions! I'm convinced more than ever that the Anthology team (led by George Martin and Geoff Emerick) were too jaded, too "close" to the material, and were ultimately disdainful of the huge task they were entrusted with. But you could probably search my name and the word "Anthology" and find my complaints in about 20 other threads!

 

For historical reasons alone, the Royal Variety Performance material deserved a place. That show was the British equivalent of the Ed Sullivan show in terms of importance and impact in their home country... as was the earlier Palladium show from which "I'll Get You" came from. A little later we get "All My Loving" from the first Sullivan show and like the rattling jewelery moment, it's an iconic moment - the moment the US public finally saw and heard The Beatles and changed history.

The Royal Variety Performance also has my fave "Till There Was You" largely down to George's lovely and graceful solo.
That would had endeared the Fabs to older viewers at home.

 

Totally Agree

 

I'm just surprised we only got one song from the historic Ed Sullivan show(s).. but FOUR from the Morecambe and Wise Show.

 

Your joking right!! these recordings are so important, more so than Ed Sullivan they introduced the world to The Beatles!!! You cannot underestimate the impact Lennon's 'For those in the cheeper seats...' had on Britian at that time!!

 

Probably for licensing reasons, same reason why there was only one BBC radio song on the set.

Evan

 

This has been one of the best threads on the forum. Oddly, it's given me a renewed appreciation for A1. Sean M. did a good job of summing up how I feel about the series so I won't repeat that.

I don't agree that GM and GE were "disdainful" of their task but they were definitely too close to the material to do the task properly. The involvement of the Beatles themselves also hurt the product. I honestly believe that all involved were clueless (at the time) about the collectors market.

Keep up the interesting commentary.

 

Is this the reason they didn't properly remix the Sessions material? Was George Martin too close to Geoff Emerick to say "this is bollucks Geoff, we must go back and do a proper mix!." There's no other explanation. I like having the historic live material (I Agree including Moonlight Bay was silly) but the wavering sound quality issues make listening difficult. Perhaps it would have been better to have all the live material on disc 2? Not sure that would work either, but going from studio outtakes into iffy quality live recordings is a bit tough to sit through. The Royal Variety Show is lovely to have. I must say I was very disappointed that the Sweden '63 show was incomplete and sounded worse than the bootleg versions... however, for fans who had never heard these songs before it must have been exciting hearing such spirited peformances without crowd din. Ron

 

Who knows? All I know is that it's almost a sure thing that when a band and/or close associates are involved in anthologies or reissues something is bound to get botched up. It's the same twist thought process that got us mono reissues and new stereo remixes. And for just the opposite reasons we have a fighting chance of decent reissues with Jeff Jones around.

It's not a topic for the thread but the complaint holds true for the Anthology book. If you want these projects done right (like Rolling with the Stones) then you bring in an outsider to oversee it.

 

why?
Morcambe and Wise was an absolute classic, the whole of the UK used to sit down and watch it together.

 

Maybe "disdainful" isn't the right word (although I'm sticking with it as MY interpretation), but they definitely were skeptical about the VALUE of releasing outtakes at all. Here's a pertinent quote from Geoff's book:

Of course, Geoff goes on to say that he felt an "obligation" to be there despite his misgivings, and that he did his darndest to "get as near to the original sound as possible." He doesn't speculate about how the Sessions mixes fit into this effort, and he admits that he was mostly interested in the sessions that he was personally involved in. Perhaps he wasn't disdainful once he started working on it, but he was certainly cavalier with the way he treated and "reinvented" some of the tracks. (imo)

 

unlike the Ed Sullivan show, right?

the show was kind of a HUGE deal in the beatles history.

 

In Britain, The Morecambe and Wise Show was a big deal.

 

i'm sure it was. but why does that justify slighting ed sullivan?
same thing happened in Vol. 2 with Blackpool.. which i really
enjoy. but we have one Ed Sullivan track in the entire project.

 

It's not that the Royal Variety and Morecambe and Wise Show appearances aren't important. The issue many of us have with the inclusion of these tracks is that the video of those appearances is readily available. The Anthology home videos have a lot of material from these shows. I don't think it makes much sense to lift the audio from the video and put it on the album, especially when there is more interesting 'audio only' recordings from the era that haven't been released.

 

If they hadn't been on there people would be going "I can't believe they left off the Royal Variety Show" etc.