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Sat 25 October 2025 22:00, UK
None of The Beatles really needed to worry about their legendary status by the time they began working on their comeback in the 1990s.
The fact that they could even make new music with the ghost of John Lennon from decades before was already a modern miracle, but when Anthology was released, each disc was a musical love letter to what made them so legendary to begin with. But for all of the love that the project had for the Fab Four, the remaining Threetles had to deal with one thing that most people of their stature don’t get too often: being told ‘no’.
Well, let’s clarify that, actually. Even when they were on top of the world, they still had to answer to a lot of middlemen, and once they all split apart from each other, they all had to deal with the biggest mountain of business forms from Apple Records for the next half-decade of their career as well. And even when they managed to be free of their business dealings, George Harrison and Ringo Starr couldn’t catch a break.
No one was expecting any of their records to be as good as what they made together, but hearing the production notes that Harrison got for Somewhere in England or the number of labels that dropped Starr in the late 1970s, it’s no wonder Lennon got out of the business for a while. He had had enough of dealing with everything, and now that he was in a decent financial place, it was better for him to spend his life at home raising his son.
But when the Anthology happened, it truly felt like a lot of the harshness from the band’s final days together had faded away. When looking at all three of them in the studio with Jeff Lynne, everyone wanted to sit back and relive the good times all over again, and judging by the amount of time they put into getting everything right, tunes like ‘Free As A Bird’ was the kind of tune that could stand alongside their masterpieces.
The video follows suit by showing the band at various points throughout their career, but when Harrison suggested that he turn up to play the final ukulele part in the video, director Joe Pytka made it clear that no contemporary Beatles should be in the video, saying, “George wanted to play that part and I resisted. I didn’t think we wanted to see contemporary Beatles in the piece. So I said, ‘No, no, no,’ and he said, ‘Okay.’ Thinking they had sampled an archival piece of music, and it turns out that George had actually performed that on the song. Had I known that, I would have let him do it because you only see him from the back anyway.”
Harrison still couldn’t manage to have his way on the final video, but it’s not like that ruined the production by any means. For those few minutes, fans can have a field day going through the streets of Liverpool and looking at all of the characters from different Beatles songs, including Rita the metre maid at the very end of the video. But the real magic of the Anthology is better captured in the video for ‘Real Love’.
Despite The Beatles not adding much to the final version of the Lennon solo track, seeing the modern images of the band members hanging out while their instruments and Sgt. Pepper costumes getting lifted up into the clouds is beautifully done. There’s not much outside of that in the video, but any hardened Beatles fan can’t shed a tear when watching Lennon’s piano get lifted up to heaven with him, they’re truly made of stone.
While it may have been a missed opportunity not to get Harrison in the video, that shouldn’t tarnish the reputation of the video, either. The whole thing was about trying to relive the good times, and in an era when the biggest names in Britpop were spreading their love of the Fab Four, it was worth it to see the band that brought joy to so many people back on the airwaves again.
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