The Beatles: Anthology 1 (1958-95)

(Apple 1995)

RECOMMENDED

Conceived in part in the 1970s, The Beatles Anthology was a vast multimedia project that took over several different avenues of mass communication in the mid-1990s, billed as the long-awaited "reunion" of the Beatles surrounded by new songs and the chance to hear them tell their entire story themselves for the first time. There was an enormous book (delayed until 2000) the band wrote themselves, a ten-hour documentary in which they, Derek Taylor, George Martin and Neil Aspinall were the only interviewees; and the core of it all, the narrative in the form of songs: six discs, released in three increments, that would reveal the Beatles in the form of previously unreleased material -- studio outtakes above all else.

This last element had been floated once before as part of what would become the core of the three compact disc collections; back in 1984, faced with a public bored of hearing the same songs mined repeatedly for absurd "themed" compilations, EMI with the help of former Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick plotted a release called Sessions, set to include thirteen items from the Abbey Road vault, never heard anywhere before (at least legally, and mostly at all). The surviving Beatles and John Lennon's estate eventually vetoed the project, but all thirteen songs (plus a proposed b-side) were later used on Anthology and its attendant singles. The spirit of Sessions certainly did survive in the drive for the Beatles to foil bootleggers by bringing coveted alternates and unknown songs to the marketplace in pristine quality; so did its odd fixation on heavily editing the songs and adding reverb... but for the most part, the progression was a happy one. The three Anthology sets are all essential for big fans of the Beatles, each slightly more so than the last.

That means, yes, that Anthology 1 is the least of the three, mostly because its entire first half is concerned with storytelling more than with the unveiling of enjoyable music. It offers contextual dialogue between tracks from John, Paul and Brian Epstein before that particular trick cuts out across the second disc (and then all four discs remaining in the overall project). It also presents a surprising amount of music that virtually every fan of any seriousness would have already heard: "My Bonnie" and the two Beatle-centric cuts from the 1961 Bert Kaempfert sessions with Tony Sheridan, and five cuts from the Decca audition. This is meant to help represent the full pre-fame phase of the Beatles' history, but its pleasures are limited, the songs were already ubiquitous ("Ain't She Sweet" was a top forty hit in the U.S.!), and there was better, more elusive stuff available, specifically the '62 Cavern rehearsals. Moving on to the second disc, the audio of the Royal Variety Performance -- with John's iconic "will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands, and the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry" jab audibly floating over the heads of most of those present -- and the first Ed Sullivan Show appearance don't mean much without the accompanying visuals, and most fans have heard them anyway. Otherwise, the tracks on the latter half seem to have been chosen for intrigue and musical quality, which is a huge improvement.

Prior to moving along to the outtakes and such, it's necessary to acknowledge the presence of what was then breathlessly billed as a "new Beatles song," "Free as a Bird," which is a John Lennon demo fleshed out by his three surviving bandmates and producer Jeff Lynne, who showers it with exhausting sugar and adult-contemporary sheen. Paul and George each sing a Shangri-Las verse and there are moments in the harmony vocals when the three singing Beatles really sound like no time has passed since "Because" -- how insane that it's already been another quarter-century since this happened -- but the song is a draggy waste on the whole, displaying none of the wit or energy of the band it's meant to revive.

With that ugliness behind us, the disc moves straight into a treasure: both sides of the 78 rpm acetate disc that the Quarrymen -- Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Duff Lowe, Colin Hanton -- recorded at the do-it-yourself disc-cutting operation Phillips Sound Recording Service in July 1958, just over a year after John and Paul met at the Woolton Garden Fete. Since the fragments that exist on tape of the Quarrymen's performance from that day include only John, this is the earliest recording that can truly be labeled "the Beatles." Both sides are amateurish but engaging and fun, the supposed "A-side" being a cover of Buddy Holly's "That'll Be the Day" on which John wields considerable enthusiasm at aping Holly's specific tics, and the band's arrangement reflects very careful study of the original record. John even brings an endearing touch of proto-punk attitude to his treatment of the song, though there are just as many moments when he seems to be shrinking away and reading it all a bit robotically.

Just to show they weren't fooling around, the Quarrymen recorded an original composition on the flip, Paul's melodramatic Elvis impersonation "In Spite of All the Danger"; said danger is never exactly explained, but George's guitar line is appealing and the trading off of the stark vocals reflects real thought and dedication on the part of these actual teenagers: John was 17, Paul 16, George 15. (Hanton was older than the others at the ripe old age of 19.) While muddy in quality and obviously a few degrees south of being an essential Beatles cut, this is one early unearthing by the Anthology compilers for which we can be grateful. For decades, the aluminum record -- fragile and with each play resulting in loss of fidelity -- was in Duff Lowe's hands before McCartney purchased it from him and provided it for use in this project. It's our first chance to properly hear the Beatles, or the Quarrymen -- really hear them -- and it is spellbinding in its fashion.

From there we move into the 1960 home tapes laid down at Paul's house on a tape recorder he borrowed, featuring John, Paul, Stuart Sutcliffe and a very small amount of George Harrison; because the entirety of these recordings can be heard on bootlegs, we can verify that the highlights are well-chosen apart from the omission of the best cut of all, John pining to the thin air on their version of the old standard "I'll Always Be in Love with You" (it did make it to the documentary). The three songs we get are of course horrible-sounding and distinctly, awkwardly homemade, but are edited well enough not to wear out their welcome or for their shortcomings to preclude archival fascination. "Hallelujah, I Love Her So" is based on the swinging Eddie Cochran version of the Ray Charles song; "Cayenne," recorded a couple of months earlier than the others, is a middling but appealingly mysterious instrumental; and "You'll Be Mine" is a surprisingly funny and entertaining send-up of the Ink Spots and other sanitized R&B balladry, with Paul commanding center stage through an outrageous Roy Orbison-like lead vocal and John offering a brilliant spoken-word interlude, which gives an advance middle finger to "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" several months before its release, filled with distinctly Lennonesque humor and wordplay: "My darling, when you brought me that toast the other morning, I -- I looked into your eyes and I could see a National Health Eyeball... and I loved you, like I never done before." Then the song descends into a disturbing cacophony of screams, coughing and laughter. In a strange way, it's an extraordinary recording, and it's kind of impressive that the 1995 Beatles let it out into the world.

It's at this juncture that Anthology 1 becomes, for about twenty minutes, one of those budget-line Beatles CDs that used to overstuff the racks thanks to the presence firstly of "My Bonnie," "Ain't She Sweet" and "Cry for a Shadow," recorded for Kaempfert during their Top Ten residency in Hamburg in the early summer of 1961, still well ahead of Brian Epstein's discovery of the group. Historically important, sure, but this isn't that different from incorporating canonical Beatles songs into the series; besides, the compilers crossfade the intro of "My Bonnie" with a Paul McCartney interview so you can't even hear all of the song. The same trick is pulled with Brian Epstein over the start of "Searchin'" from the Decca tape. A third of that recording of the Beatles' 1962 Decca audition is here and does have slightly more reason for being included since all of the releases of it over the years had been on something of a "gray market" basis, and frequently omitted the Lennon-McCartney numbers; but then again, this set skips one of those originals, "Love of the Loved." Anyone with an interest in hearing this music is better off with a more complete collection of it. My thoughts on this material are found in my reviews of In the Beginning and The Decca Audition Tape.

At that point, twenty tracks in, we get to the good stuff: two fruits of the Beatles' very first EMI session on June 6th, 1962: a belligerently stupid version of "Besame Mucho" (why?) and a sluggish "Love Me Do" with Pete Best on drums and an unstable, constantly varying rhythm as a result. The band returned to EMI nearly three months later and, with Ringo now on drums, tackled the Mitch Murray composition "How Do You Do It," viewed by George Martin as a surefire hit. He infamously directed the Beatles to arrange and play it, even though their own writing is what had gotten them their contract, and while their version is markedly better than the later hit by Gerry and the Pacemakers, the song just isn't good enough for them to make anything much out of it. Thankfully, this is followed by a revelation one week later: the first recorded version of "Please Please Me," Andy White sitting in on the drumkit, clearly revealing an enthusiasm and potential that would change the lives of everyone involved (except White, perhaps).

Here the "documentary" elements of Anthology 1 start to fall away, as we jump straight ahead to a point where the Beatles' lives have already become impossibly hectic. It's March 1963, their first album is a few weeks away from release, and they're so scattered they can't quite get a complete take of "One After 909," one of John and Paul's earliest songs, onto tape; the magic of 1980s editing allows several takes to be spliced together to create one. Fans of course will know this song from its harder-rocking, quicker take on Let It Be, but the earlier outtake is probably the better arrangement and performance, a solid and ingratiating midtempo rocker that could easily have enhanced any of the band's early LPs, though it was most likely never good enough to be considered as a possible single. It's then another four-month jump to a BBC session that, for some reason, didn't make it to Live at the BBC in 1994: a July 1963 take on Carl Perkins' "Lend Me Your Comb" -- it's reasonably good, but it's a mystery why it was considered special enough to warrant inclusion here instead of on the BBC-dedicated compilation. (Evidently realizing this, Apple later included it on the BBC collection's sequel, On Air.)

The rest of Disc One consists of portions of an October 1963 live show in Stockholm, at which they're positively glowing with fire and fury. "From Me to You" and "You Really Got a Hold on Me" in particular are electrifying performances, the latter one of the most insanely tight live Beatles cuts we've got, with John's vocals shattering in their pleading, inconsolable force. Three further live sequences open the second disc, but these are far less interesting. The Royal Variety Performance, as noted above, is historically essential but the Beatles are playing to a less than frenzied crowd and it shows; it's quite hard to sell "Twist and Shout" to an audience like that. The December 1963 performances and chitchat from the Morecambe and Wise show are a little better and certainly funnier, but why listen when you can watch it? Finally, after a short interlude in a Paris studio, the band's American invasion is represented by the uninspired choice of the opening number from The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9th, 1964, "All My Loving," which anyone who's seen any documentary about the band has already heard -- and it just isn't as interesting without the video.

This illustrates a huge problem, by the way, with Anthology 1 and 2, one that has been bothering me since I was a child buying these as they came out -- the jolting back and forth between live and studio material is confusing and disengaging, and comes across as unfocused. It's very weird to listen to two Beatles TV appearances almost in full, then to an excellent alternate studio verison of "Can't Buy Me Love," then to go right back to a TV studio for Ed. A separate live anthology might have better served the band, especially because the decisions about what shows to focus on make less and less sense as the series goes on, and because there seems to be a strong resistance to duplicating any songs that occur elsewhere on these discs, which removes a great deal of potential and forces some odd editing. Disc two dives a bit into the sessions for A Hard Day's Night, then suddenly switches back again, admittedly without an audience this time, for the Around the Beatles show. I used to dread hearing the screams come on when I listened to these CDs, and it wasn't so much that I disliked listening to live Beatles recordings as that I just would have preferred them to have their own home.

Back at last to studio outtakes then, with the terrific original Paris take on "Can't Buy Me Love," a soulful arrangement that sounds far more forward-looking than the eventual master and single because of its off-kilter, stoned quality and could practically be on Rubber Soul (specifically, it sounds like "The Word"); the only issue is that George's guitar solo is awful, and that this laid-back variation most likely wouldn't have fit well with the two famous scenes in Richard Lester's film in which the song features. Skipping over Sullivan we find "You Can't Do That," which isn't much different from the released take, and "A Hard Day's Night," which shows the song still in progress, especially lyrically; John and Paul just chant through a lot of the later verses. Finally there's an exceptional version of "And I Love Her" which replaces that song's moony-eyed sweetness with a picked electric guitar, a drum line and a feeling of surprising, hard-won toughness that only falls apart because the band can't quite keep together up to the end. (Broadly speaking I think the Beatles might have done well to make sure they were still functioning as a rock band when working up Paul's slow ones like this and "Yesterday," but I'm clearly a minority.)

The Around the Beatles songs are another meaningless inclusion, and they are very painfully mixed to stereo here with awkward panning and too much empty space in the soundstage. The highlight is easily the band's take on the Isley Brothers' "Shout," which is also extensively edited down under two minutes and only vamps on the second half of the original single, though it's wonderful to hear all four Beatles singing lead on a song and also exciting that they would use a national TV appearance to cover a tune they admired but never otherwise recorded.

The remainder of Anthology 1 is probably the most consistently entertaining portion of all, covering session materials from June 1964 to the end of the year. We get to hear the Beatles change their minds about the time signature in "I'll Be Back," practically in real time and with examples given of the ponderous waltz version -- "too hard to sing!" yells John -- and an early, hushed variant on the released arrangement. Two demos from June 3rd offer opposing experiences; a crass "No Reply" has John and Paul unable to stop letting the word "face" send them into hysterics, with a few disarmingly natural moments of cracking up caught on tape. Much more fun for general listeners is the demo of "You Know What to Do," recorded at the Ringo-less Abbey Road session during Jimmy Niccol's tour with the band as Ringo's temporary replacement due to tonsil surgery. This is a lost classic of sorts, one of George Harrison's earliest and sweetest songs, and the biggest shock might be the arrangement, which indicates -- as does "I'll Be Back," incidentally -- that the Beatles were predicting folk-rock something like a full year ahead of time. Had they released this song, even in this unadorned demo mode with no drums, in mid-1965, my feeling is it would've been massive. I never hear people talk about this song but it's better, in my view, than most of those George actually released with the band, a kind and spirited love song with a perfect, peaceful mood about it. It's not quite the best "new" song on this record, though; that's coming up.

After an amusing outtake of "Mr. Moonlight" (which I still think is an underrated cover, and those who find it cheesy are underestimating the Beatles' awareness of its excesses, and John's zeroing in on its core of sadness) we come to one of the only times in the Beatles' recorded career when they and George Martin made absolutely the wrong choice. Beatles for Sale is a great record, a perfect bridge between their early raw rock & roll and the more reflective folk-rock of Rubber Soul, but why, why, why couldn't they have made room on it for "Leave My Kitten Alone"? This Little Willie John cover is so striking it was nearly released as a single in the '80s as part of the Sessions project, and it leaps out from the rest of the buried treasures on Anthology 1; in the studio, the band rarely rocked harder in any phase of their career, and somehow, this long-unissued recording boasts one of the best lead vocals John Lennon ever delivered. Whatever was going on in his life that day to cause him to drench this particular song in utterly uninhibited passion, it created some sort of a miracle. Despite being in the vaults until 1995, this is a quintessential Beatles recording -- vital, extraordinary, and a perfect dousing of Silver Beatles intensity on the mostly introspective material from the latter half of 1964 in the band's catalog.

Closing this chapter out, there's an early runthrough of "No Reply" that still doesn't quite get the arrangement down -- the decision to amp up the drama was made further down the line -- and still has John cackling at "your face" at least once. As with "Can't Buy Me Love," a sequence of alternate takes of "Eight Days a Week" suggest that song could've been even better, with the guitars further up into your face, a slightly more complex chorus, and a wonderful a cappella opening harmony. And for yet another odd Beatles for Sale decision, the take of "Kansas City" that closes us out is a bit more raucous and intense than the master; it's a bit hard to discern why it wasn't chosen for the album.

With that, we leave the Beatles at the end of the year in which the entire world became theirs; the stresses of intense scrutiny would soon rock their boat and they would start rebelling against the punishing schedule they'd been working by now for three years. But in this moment, of course, the Beatles were the nexus of popular culture, and it's kind of the compilers to let us hang there for just a moment, relishing a time in which the obsession a certain number of us will carry to our graves was the obsession of seemingly everyone, and the band was still reveling in the possibilities of their position -- still four guys who were just a band that made it very very big, that's all.