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With the news of the Beatles Anthology re-release coming in November, I thought it would be interesting to see how the Beatles Anthology was reported prior to the release 30 years ago in 1995.
Beatlemania Macca Style
By Eamon Carr
Dublin Evening Herald
September 28, 1995
It had to happen sooner or later; someone had to excavate the vast treasure trove of unreleased Beatles recordings that filled the vaults of the recording company EMI.
However, John Lennon fans are worried that Paul McCartney is a dominant partner in the task force behind the impending Beatles blast. Those who remember the duo's vendetta are uncomfortable with Paul's role in the upcoming release schedule that's certain to put the fab three and a ghost at the top of all our Christmas charts.
You don't have to have been a Beatles fan to have known of the rancor that existed between the two former partners following the group's split in 1970. Now, 25 years later, the Beatles are back. November is Beatle month. That's when Beatles people get the first three album installment of a new nine-album, Beatles Anthology. That's when "Free as a Bird" will pour out of almost every Beatles station on your Beatle dial.
The track, a John Lennon demo tape, has been lovingly restructured as a Beatles performance with his three former chums and Beatles producer George Martin [sic] grafting contemporary accompaniment on the dead Beatles' old tape. Wild, huh?
This sort of electronic trickery is not new. Don't forget, awards were showered on Natalie Cole for duetting with her deceased dad a couple of years ago. What was positively eerie about that technological miracle was a video that implied they were communicating with some psychic, astral image machine. No one's saying whether there are any such sensational surprises in store in the new six-part TV documentary, The Beatles Anthology, the final episode of which will be screened on Christmas Day.
In the mid-70s, The Clash sang, "Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust. " Well, I've news for Joe Strummer. Beatlemania is about to be given a whole new lease of life, only this time around, it'll lack the spontaneity, the hilarity, and the cultural impact of the movement which shook the 60s. It's all very well digging out a few old tunes which were passed over the first time around, no doubt they'll sound chirpy enough when tidied up and given a new sonic sheen, but this concentrated marketing campaign lacks the stumbling naeitivy and handy amazement of a bunch of Scousers who couldn't believe their luck in the 60s ss month after month, country after country fell into their blitzkrieg bop.
As long ago as 1984, EMI had prepared Sessions, an album of alternate versions of old Beatles favorites. It was the Beatles themselves who put the block on the album's release. As Ringo said, "I always felt that what we put out was what we thought was the best."
Today, Paul McCartney is excited by the re-release project. "It's like being archaeologists," he explains. "Finding tracks that we didn't remember recording, uncovering songs that we didn't want or thought weren't good enough. But now, of course, after 30 years, they don't seem too bad at all."
Chart dominance will, no doubt, consolidate the Beatles reputation with the younger generation, and a generation who hearing tunes their parents like, can have no inkling of the seismic effect those songs originally had on a society which still lived in the debilitating shadow of a couple of World Wars.
Fab Paul will no doubt welcome a re-evaluation of his contribution to Western civilization. Despite being one of the richest men in Britain, he's still considered by many as a smiling Music Hall act who writes lightweight jingles, while Lennon was portrayed as the tortured avant-garde artist who lacerated his soul in public.
"It's funny, but a lot of black artists get more respect as they get older," he said at the time of the release of Flowers in the Dirt. "I think a lot of us white artists would like that too"
As he prepared to go on the road at the time, he admitted that his Rupert Bear and Frog Chorus work had substantially altered people's perception of him as a rock and roller. "I don't see myself as this nice chap balladeer," He insists. "After all, I did Sgt. Pepper, The White Album, and so on. All really experimental albums in their own way." But people persist in their evaluation of McCartney as the chirpy individual who penned "Michelle my belle", while Lennon, the experimental one, was groaning about "yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye."
Mind you, worldwide sales of Beatles music is still phenomenal, and McCartney's "Yesterday" is the most played song in history. Other songwriters may envy his talent, but Paul was mystified when he knocked out a melody with the word "scrambled eggs". "It was so complete", he says, of the song that became one of the biggest earning songs of all time. "It sounded like a tune I must have heard before. I couldn't believe I'd written it."
Twenty-five years after they split up, the Beatles are the biggest-earning musical act in the United States. So far this year, they've grossed $130 million, which is $9 million more than the Rolling Stones, who have been touring on a wave of hype and corporate sponsorship. For long before they recorded "I want to be your man", the song Lennon and McCartney wrote especially for them, the Stones have played second fiddle to the Liverpool lads.
An echo of this north-south rivalry can be detected in the current Oasis-Blur feud; both bands and their contemporaries, Supergrass and Cast, as well as more established acts such as Squeeze and Crowded House, owe an obvious debt to the Beatles' influence.
The timing of the new Beatles Bonanza seems militarily precise. At the end of last year, we were treated to a double CD of live performances recorded for the BBC. The unique selling point of these recordings was that they were unadorned, audio variety representations of what the Fab Four sounded like at the time, minus the screaming hordes. The package sold out immediately. EMI's failure to correctly anticipate demand left many executives red-faced. They're unlikely to botch the launch of this new three-album set, after all, the three remaining Beatles have spent two years readying material for public consumption, and fans are already placing their orders for the latest installments in a saga that spans the generation gap.
As the market is flooded with Beatles tributes, including an album of their songs covered by country stars, another one covered by jazz artists, and yet another bizarre novelty featuring barking dogs, the world might just be ready for a rave remix of "All I Want for Christmas is a Beatle."
