Published on Oct 13, 2001
Back in 1995, there was a bit of a Beatles craze reborn in
people, thanks to both the televised
Anthology (which I have on tape) and the three-volume
release of music over the period of 18 months. Yet the people who
could really appreciate any portion of The Beatles
Anthology are the die-hard freaks (and I use the term with
respect) who all but worship the ground that John Lennon, Paul
McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr walked on. The casual
listener to the Beatles might pick up
Anthology 1 based on the single “Free As A Bird,” and find
themselves wondering what happened to the hits, and why these
alternate versions are here in their place.
Admittedly, I am not in the cult of the Beatles. Do I think they
were a good rock band? Yes. Do I think they were musical gods? Not
by a long shot. Yet here I am, after two hours in traffic, writing
about 1995’s
Anthology 1… and I like what I hear, to a point.
Let’s get the “reunion” out of the way first. Anyone who claims
that “Free As A Bird” is what the Beatles would have sounded like
had they stayed together is lying; the fact is, we’ll never know,
nor will we ever be able to fathom the concept of what direction
their music would have taken. That said, this is an interesting
track which suggests that had Lennon not been murdered in 1980,
this would have been an interesting snapshot. It does, though, have
a little too heavy of a production hand thanks to Jeff Lynne,
someone who seems like he’s always fancied himself to be an
unofficial Beatle a la the
Sergeant Pepper era. I wish that George Martin had been
called in to handle this track; after all, quite possibly no one
knows the Beatles sound better than this living legend.
Anthology 1 is a portrait of the artists as young men,
mostly focusing on their early development and love of 12-bar
blues-rock that was prevalent at the time, as well as the day’s
popular music. Listening to the earliest recording of the group
(then The Quarry Men) covering “That’ll Be The Day” held out
promise for the group, though it might have been hard to pick out
through the now aged recording.
At times,
Anthology 1 has the feel of an authorized bootleg, with
scratchy, distorted tapes echoing some of the birth cries of
arguably the world’s most famous band. It’s sometimes hard to get
through the early numbers like “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” and
“Cayenne” (the latter being the only Beatles song I’ve ever seen
credited to McCartney/Lennon and not vice-versa) merely because of
the poor quality of the recordings. Some of the live performances
are similarly difficult mostly because of the crowd reactions
(though the live tracks here sometimes are better than what was
released on
Live From The BBC). The appearance with Eric Morecambe and
Ernie Wise, Britain’s top comics at the time, loses something both
without the visual presence to back it up and with the passage of
almost 40 years. (I seem to recall the performance is on the
video.)
What might throw the casual listener for a loop are the
alternate versions of songs like “Please Please Me,” “Love Me Do,”
“And I Love Her” (which is sped up into a rock tempo) and “I’ll Be
Back”, amongst others. Admittedly, this took me aback at first, but
it does make a lot of sense. After all, if you wanted to hear the
studio-polished numbers, there are several discs you could go to
for them. What
Anthology 1 allows the listener to do is enter the creative
process in a way that we previously could have only dreamed about,
and hear the songs in various states of preparedness. It takes a
little time to get used to, but soon becomes interesting. (In the
case of “And I Love Her,” one can understand why the Beatles never
pursued the rockier version, and went to the acoustic-driven sound
we all know well.)
As
Anthology 1 winds down, we can feel the momentum for The
Beatles shifting into supergroup mode, especially with the
inclusion of “All My Loving” from their Ed Sullivan appearance. The
set breaks off leaving the listener wanting to hear more, even if
you’re just a casual Beatles listener who stumbled in.
Yet, for the casual listener,
Anthology 1 is more challenging simply because you have to
put aside what you know (or at least what you think you know) about
the Beatles, and enter this set with a clean slate. The long-time
Beatles fans probably are more familiar with approaching some of
this “in process” material; most people will feel like they walked
in on something they might not feel right listening to. It’s almost
like we’re intruding on sacred ground – and while I can appreciate
there are people who absolutely love The Beatles, I just wonder
whether it was necessary to release so much early material that
really doesn’t add (or, for that matter, subtract) from the
Liverpool legend.
Anthology 1 is a set designed for the die-hard Beatles fan,
though it is well worth the time and effort for the everyday
listener to pick up and check out. I question whether this set will
be the kind of collection you go back to again and again, but it’s
a chapter of the Beatles experience that you should experience in
order to understand what precipitated some of their later musical
moves. Like I said, I’m not in the cult of the Beatles… but after
Anthology 1, I’m interested to hear how things unfold in
Anthology 2.