Remastered 'Beatles Anthology' reminds us the Fab Four will never fade

Have you met the Beatles? The odds are you have, whether you grew up with them, sought them out, or were never formally introduced. You may know the name, at least, even without having heard the numbers, as one knows Shakespeare’s without having read or seen a play, or even knowing he wrote them.

The Fab Four — phenomenal in their time, phenomenal after. Though they made their split official in 1970 after coming apart in bits and pieces, they have never gone away. As long as John Lennon lived, there was always the possibility of the band getting back together — in a classic “Saturday Night Live” bit, Lorne Michaels offered them $3,000 to reunite on the show — and his death, and the global consciousness of loss, launched an era of revived Beatles awareness, of finding new things to do with the old music, protecting the legacy and promoting the brand.

With the band’s recorded catalog lately being remixed, remastered and rereleased, in special editions with extra tracks, it was only logical that Apple would get around to the movies. Peter Jackson’s “Get Back,” his six-hour AI-enhanced cut of footage shot during the making of the album “Let It Be,” premiered Thanksgiving 2021, followed in May 2024 by his remastering of Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s original “Let It Be” itself. (Last Thanksgiving, we got the Martin Scorsese-produced “Beatles ‘64,” built on the Maysles Brothers film of the band’s first visit to America; the moptops have become a new holiday tradition.)

Now, 30 years after it premiered here, also around Thanksgiving, the digital squeegee has been applied to “Anthology,” the band’s own multi-part video memoir. (It aired on ABC over three nights; this edition, which echoes the longer video release, comes as eight episodes, with a new, extra ninth.) Premiering Wednesday on Disney+, also over three nights, it does look great; my only complaint is that music, every little snippet of it, is mixed too loud against the rest of the film. To make it exciting, I suppose, or because that’s what the kids expect these days; but I am right when I tell you it is wrong.

Along with the film, the original “Anthology” project included a coffee table book; three two-CD sets of demos, alternates and unfinished takes; and two “new” songs, “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love,” in which the surviving Fabs added themselves to a demo recorded by John at the piano. (In 2023, a third song, “Now and Then,” was completed by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr; it topped charts in the U.S. and U.K. and won a Grammy for rock performance.) This year adds another audio set, “Anthology 4.”

Source: Robert Lloyd/latimes.com

Read More>>>