Did the Anthology trilogy succeed in being the final word of bootlegs? | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

The Anthology discs are great for a great number of new outtakes and demos we got that had never been issued before however it is deeply flawed, its best taken as an introduction to the world of Beatles Bootlegs.

There are so many utterly pointless edits and cut and paste reconstructions that should have been punted early on in Apples decision making (one argument for the reconstructions (the bass of take 2, vocal of take 65, guitar solo form overdub reduction take 34, basic track of take 21 etc) is the Beatles did it but that was for the final master take to be released as the ultimate version, here we are taking outtakes showing how they got to that point). Give us take 2, not take 2 with the bass from take 4 and vocal from take 7. 

The numerous edits are so infuriating. ‘Shout’, ’12-Bar Original’ and ‘Not Guilty ‘ are all next to worthless as they were all but butchered, either give me them complete or don’t waste the minutes taken to hack parts out. I despise the looped ending of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps ‘. So off you have to go searching for bootlegs as they are out there and better. Plus we get the crap fake mixes Emerick put together for the rejected 80’s ‘Sessions’ as they were too damn lazy to go back to master tapes and make new ones.

Many of the later outtakes are not that different from the final takes and we know they had better as we have since heard Take 20 RM1 of ‘Revolution 1 ‘ and a guitar solo in ‘Here Comes The Sun ‘ so why not release those?

Where are the acoustic Esher demo’s of the more rockier tracks that ended up on the White Album (‘Back In The USSR ‘, ‘Revolution ‘, ‘Yer Blues ‘)? Give us at least one of those instead of two versions of ‘Glass Onion ‘. And lets not forget ‘Child Of Nature ‘, that’s blatantly more important than an edited ‘Honey Pie ‘?

Hamburg 1962 is ignored as is Twickenham 1969 (the reason for the latter presumably being it was all recorded in mono and never intended for release as it was rehearsals – erm none of this would ever have been intended for commercial release you muppets).

They stupidly left off ‘Love of the Loved’ from the Decca 1962 audition, the one remaining Lennon/McCartney original, so again off you go to hunt down whatever to hear it.

We got 5 of the 6 tracks from the ‘Blackpool Night Out’ ’65 show. There is enough space so stick on ‘Act Naturally ‘ and give Ringo his vocal.

For the final two live tracks we have ‘She’s A Woman ‘ and ‘Rock And Roll Music ‘ from Japan. Think about it for 2 minutes and instead include something current from that period such as ‘Nowhere Man ‘, ‘Paperback Writer ‘, or ‘If I Needed Someone ‘. Yes the quality isnt great as the Beatles couldnt be bothered but its the same for those two they did include. What about Candlestick Park? Last live show, in decent quality, and the Beatles tried a bit more.

And finally throughout much of disc one of ‘Anthology 1 ‘ we get interviews setting out the background for some of the tracks yet before you reach disc two its gone never to reappear. A minor gripe and i’m thankfully they did but why include it in the first place? No one sitting there would be listening to ‘My Bonnie ‘ screaming “i dont know why this is here!!”. Oh and they used the wrong mixes of the Tony Sheridan recordings.

And folk ask why i am always putting Apple down. 

Remember, this only covers the Anthology discs. I havent started on ‘Let It Be Naked’.

The Faul On The Hill said
Yeah because lord knows Anthology 3 was a complete pig’s ear of an album because we didn’t get the full 12 minutes of Helter Skelter take 2!

‘Helter Skelter ‘ is one of the edits i do like. 

Listen to the Apple edit of ‘Not Guilty ‘ and the complete take which is out on youtube, maybe you’ll realise why it infuriates me. Same goes for the looped ending of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps ‘. If edits are done with a bit of care and attention you can maybe get past them but not when it was done so badly it decimates the recording.

Silly Girl said

@meanmistermustard griped 

And folk ask why i am always putting Apple down. 

No, we never do. We just say yep, that’s mmm for you.  

Anyway, in answer to the inquiry, no, I don’t think so. The Anthology is sort of like a ‘best of’ compilation of outtakes– it doesn’t come close to the whole package. 

(Not to say of course that it is the best of– that’s debatable. I mean it’s the same idea.) 

I dont even think its a best of. Would be interesting to actually go thru the 6 discs and see what is unique, what could be replaced for better mixes or unedited versions, what was entirely pointless, and what should have been included but for whatever reason wasn’t. 

The Void said
I have mixed feelings about Anthology – there’s some interesting stuff there but on the whole it falls between two stools.  Not complete enough for completists and not commercial enough for casual listeners – there’s an air of identity crisis to the whole series.

There’s some absolutely pointless things on there, like the instrumental versions of Eleanor Rigby and Within You, Without You, but some fascinating gems as well.

I bend more to the completist category and would rather listen to the full Esher White Album demos, full Decca audition etc.  Thinking about it, I’m not much one for compilations – I’d much rather listen to an album rather than a Greatest Gits, filler and all – so was destined to always find Anthology bitty.

So to answer the question I think that if anything Anthology will serve more as a gateway to fans wanting to acquire more (full) bootlegs rather than satisfying peoples’ desire for them!

That was Apple’s approach for a long while and they ended up appeasing neither camp. They finally got the message with the bonus disc of ‘1+’ yet even that has its flaws – plus they hardly bothered their backsides to properly promote it.