All together now: the Beatles’ classic Anthology documentary is finally getting a long-awaited new edition. The new Anthology is restored, remastered, and expanded—the full story of the Beatles, in the words of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr themselves. The original eight-episode series was a worldwide sensation when it premiered on TV in November 1995, as were all three companion albums. The lavish book arrived in 2000. The full Anthology phenomenon — on screen, on record, in print — is the most comprehensive version of the Beatles’ tale ever told.
The new nine-part Anthology will be streaming on Disney+, beginning November 26. It now has a brand-new Episode Nine, featuring unseen footage of the surviving three Beatles working on the original documentary in 1994 and 1995. The music has also been expanded with a new Anthology 4 album, out November 21. Pre-order Now
Apple has restored the documentary with Peter Jackson’s Wingnut Films & Park Road Post teams, along with Giles Martin, who has done new mixes of the music. It’s excellent news for fans, since they’ve spent years clamoring for a restored edition. The original doc was a bestseller on home video, but hasn’t been available for streaming. The Beatles Anthology book will get a new 25th Anniversary Edition, out October 14. Pre-order Now
Giles Martin has remastered the Anthology albums, but the bombshell is the new Anthology 4, with 36 tracks, including 13 previously unreleased outtakes and demos, on vinyl, CD, and digital audio. It includes never-heard versions of classics like “In My Life,” “Nowhere Man,” “If I Fell,” and “I’ve Just Seen a Face.” There’s also an unreleased rehearsal for the BBC broadcast of “All You Need Is Love.” Pre-Save and pre-Order Now
The Nineties Anthology albums had a classic introduction from Derek Taylor, the band’s longtime friend, publicist, and confidant. He famously proclaimed the Beatles “the twentieth century’s greatest romance.” Beautiful words — but he had no way of knowing that thirty years later, the world’s romance with the Beatles would be more passionate than ever. Anthology is a key part of how that happened. It became a global event that blew up their popularity to new levels, firing up a whole generation of young fans.
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Anthology was a radical approach to the story — no narrator, no talking heads, just the lads themselves, up close and personal, with loads of unseen footage that fans hadn’t even imagined. It follows the whole epic Beatles saga, from their early days in Liverpool to their black-leather nights in Hamburg, through their years of innovation and experimentation, right up to the band’s demise and John Lennon’s death. The surviving Fabs speak their minds more candidly than ever before, as they recall living through the insane global explosion of Beatlemania and their U.S. invasion. As George says, “They used us as an excuse to go mad, the world did, and then blamed it on us.”
Anthology was a turning point in the Beatles’ afterlife. It proved once and for all that their ever-increasing popularity had nothing to do with nostalgia, but everything to do with how this music spoke to the current moment, as it does thirty years later. It’s full of classic scenes that became a permanent part of Beatles lore, including the emotional moments where all three sit on the grass, strumming and singing together. In one much-loved scene, Paul responds to the long-running debate over whether the White Album was too long. He’s really diplomatic about it. “It was great!” Paul replies. “It sold! It’s the bloody Beatles’ White Album! Shut up!”
But the albums were as crucial to the Anthology phenomenon as the film. Their legendary producer George Martin did the three double-CD packages, with his teenage son Giles as his apprentice. All three volumes were full of previously unreleased gems from the archives—outtakes, demos, live clips, studio chatter. (“Paul’s broken a glass!”) It was the first time they’d ever opened up the vaults to share some of the treasures that had been sitting unheard all these years.
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Crazy as it seems now, nobody in 1995 was sure if the audience wanted to hear any of this. But the albums became blockbuster hits, shocking the music industry. It turned out people were hungry for more Beatles, far hungrier than the experts had realized — especially the young fans just discovering this band. The world was in the middle of the Nineties music revolution—modern rock, Britpop, electronica, hip-hop — with the Beatles more influential than ever. These albums began the series of ace archival projects over the past decade, starting with the pivotal deluxe editions of Sgt. Pepper and the White Album, as well as films like Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years, Beatles ’64, and Peter Jackson’s Get Back.
The Nineties Anthology included a pair of new songs, “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” based on John Lennon’s 1970s demos, recorded at home in the Dakota. Paul, George, and Ringo completed them in the studio for Anthology. Both became international hits, despite the major technical limitations of John’s original tapes. But both have been redone by original producer Jeff Lynne, using the “de-mixing” technology pioneered in Jackson’s Get Back film and the final Beatles song, “Now and Then.” The “Free As a Bird” music video has been restored both visually and sonically.
The complete albums will be available as 12-LP box set on 180-gram vinyl, and an 8-CD box set, from Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMG — 191 tracks in all. They’ll also be released digitally, for both purchase and streaming. The Beatles Store has exclusive editions of both sets, including four 12-inch band-photo art cards in numbered envelopes. The boxes include the original sleeve notes as well as new notes from band scholar Kevin Howlett.
The Anthology book will be issued in a new softcover edition from Apple Corps Ltd./Chronicle Books. It has the massive size of a coffee-table book, but it’s considerably more than that — it’s a landmark of Fabs history in itself. It goes even deeper than the series, with in-depth commentary from all three that didn’t fit into the screen version, as well as fresh interviews conducted specifically for the book. All three surviving Beatles granted access to their private archives, while the Lennon commentary and photos come from all over his public and private archives. The consulting editor was Derek Taylor, who worked on it until his death in 1997. He didn’t live to see it, but he would have loved seeing how “the twentieth century’s greatest romance” was about to get even hotter in the next century.
In the Anthology book, Lennon talks about the childhood dream life that helped inspire “Free As a Bird.” “One recurrent dream, all through my life, was the flying bit,” he recalled in 1971. “I’d always fly in time of danger. I remember it as a child, flying around, like swimming in the air. I’d be swimming round where I lived or somewhere I knew very well usually. The other times in dreams I remember are nightmarish, where there’d be a giant horse or something and whenever it would get near to a danger point I would fly away.”
Flight was always a fantasy for him. “Some of my most vivid dreams were about me being in a plane, flying over a certain part of Liverpool. It as when I was at school. The plane used to fly over time and time again, going higher and higher.” What John Lennon and his bandmates did with those dreams transformed the world. That’s the flight they took together — and that’s the story all four Beatles are telling in Anthology.
Track List:
Anthology, VOLUME 4
LP ONE:
Side A:
1: “I Saw Her Standing There” (Take 2)
The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963 – limited digital release (2013)
2: “Money (That’s What I Want”) (RM7 undubbed)
The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963 – limited digital release (2013)
3: “This Boy” (Takes 12 and 13) – Free As A Bird CD single (currently unavailable)
4: “Tell Her Why” (Takes 4 and 5) – previously unreleased
5: “If I Fell” (Take 11) – previously unreleased
6: “Matchbox” (Take 1) – previously unreleased
7: “Every Little Thing” (Takes 6 and 7) – previously unreleased
8: “I Need You” (Take 1) – previously unreleased
Side B:
1: “I’ve Just Seen a Face” (Take 3) – previously unreleased
2: “In My Life” (Take 1) – previously unreleased
3: “Nowhere Man” (First Version – Take 2) – previously unreleased
4: “Got to Get You Into My Life” (Second Version – unnumbered mix)
Revolver Special Edition (2022)
5: “Love You Too” (Take 7) Revolver Special Edition (2022)
6: “Strawberry Fields Forever” (Take 26)
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Special Edition (2017)
7: “She’s Leaving Home” (Take 1 – Instrumental)
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Special Edition (2017)
LP TWO:
Side A:
1: “Baby, You’re A Rich Man” (Takes 11 and 12) – previously unreleased
2: “All You Need Is Love” (Rehearsal for BBC broadcast) – previously unreleased
3: “The Fool On the Hill” (Take 5 – Instrumental) – previously unreleased
4: “I Am the Walrus” (Take 19 – Strings, brass, clarinet overdub) – previously unreleased
Side B:
1: “Hey Bulldog” (Take 4 – Instrumental) – previously unreleased
2: “Goodnight” (Take 10 with a guitar part from Take 5)
The Beatles (‘White Album’) Special Edition (2018)
3: While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (Third Version – Take 27)
The Beatles (‘White Album’) Special Edition (2018)
4: “(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care” (Studio Jam)
The Beatles (‘White Album’) Special Edition (2018)
5: “Helter Skelter” (Second Version – Take 17
The Beatles (‘White Album’) Special Edition (2018)
6: “I Will” (Take 29)
The Beatles (‘White Album’) Special Edition (2018)
7: “Can You Take Me Back” (Take 1)
The Beatles (‘White Album’) Special Edition (2018)
8: “Julia” (Two Rehearsals)
The Beatles (‘White Album’) Special Edition (2018)
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LP THREE:
Side A:
1: “Get Back” (Take 8) Let It Be Special Edition (2021)
2: “Octopus’s Garden’s” (Rehearsal)
Let It Be Special Edition (2021)
3: “Don’t Let Me Down” (First Rooftop Performance)
Let It Be Special Edition (2021)
4: “You Never Give Me Your Money” (Take 36)
Abbey Road Special Edition (2019)
5: “Here Comes the Sun”(Take 9)
Abbey Road Special Edition (2019)
6: “Something” (Take 39 – Instrumental – strings only)
Abbey Road Special Edition (2019)
Side B:
1: “Free As A Bird” (2025 Mix) – new mix
2: “Real Love” (2025 Mix) – new mix
3: “Now and Then” – 2023 Single + The Beatles 1966-1970 (‘Blue Album’) (2023)
