Special Features - 1:22:46
1. Recollections – June 1994 [16:51] - Paul, George and Ringo spend a happy summer's day together; singing, playing and warmly remembering early days of room sharing, haircuts, Beatle boots, first cars and meeting Elvis.
* "Baby What You Want Me To Do" (Reed)
* Raunchy (Justis-Manker)
* "Thinking of Linking" (McCartney)
* Blue Moon of Kentucky (Monroe)
* Ain't She Sweet (Yellen-Ager)
2. Compiling The Anthology Albums [10:48] - Paul, George, Ringo and George Martin detail the process of how they choose the tracks for Anthology Albums 1, 2 and 3.
* A Day in the Life (Take 1)
3. Back At Abbey Road – May 1995 [14:51] - Returning to Studio 2, Paul, George, Ringo and George Martin reflect on recording at Abbey Road Studios in the Sixties and some of the inventive techniques used in creating these recordings.
* Golden Slumbers (Take 1)
* I'm Only Sleeping
* Tomorrow Never Knows (Take 1 & Final Take)
4. Recording “Free as a Bird” And “Real Love” [10:57] - Paul, George, Ringo and Jeff Lynne reveal how they were able to produce the two new Beatles tracks from John's original demos provided by Yoko. This section includes intimate footage filmed in the studio during the recording of the tracks.
* Free as a Bird (Lennon/Lennon-McCartney-Harrison-Starkey)
* Real Love (Lennon)
5. Production Team [13:03] - Neil Aspinall, Derek Taylor, Geoff Wonfor, Chips Chipperfield and other key members of the Anthology production Team explain the process of how The Beatles Anthology series was created.
6. Making The “Free as a Bird” Video [11:12] - An intriguing insight into how the Grammy award winning video for Free as a Bird was made. Director Joe Pytka explains how he and Apple developed the concept and discusses the innovative techniques that were used in the production.
* Free as a Bird (Lennon/Lennon-McCartney-Harrison-Starkey)
7. “Real Love” Video [4:07] - The video that was not featured in the Anthology series, now remixed in 5.1 Surround Sound.
* Real Love (Lennon)
8. Credits (0:57)
Wikipedia
Friday, December 31, 2010
Thursday, December 30, 2010
The Beatles' Comments on the Rooftop Concert
Recorded January 30, 1969
George: If anybody wants to sing and play on their roof, what's the law say as to why you can't do that?
John: Disturbing the peace.
George: How disturbing the peace?
Paul: Peace means like peace, the noise, they think peace is noise.
John: Well, they may as well ban planes and cars.
Michael Lindsay-Hogg: Disturbing the peace mans traffic jams, people, planes, that sort of thing.
John: With a bit of doctoring, we'll be good. I missed a line on "Don't Let Me Down." Can you use another shot?
Paul: We'll edit it.
George Martin: It's come off actually much better than I thought it would.
John: Yes, just the whole scene is fantastic!
George Martin: As Michael was saying, this is a very good dry run for something else too, apart from the value of its own as it stands.
George: Yeah, I think for taking over London.
John: Try the Hilton tomorrow.
George Martin: The idea is, we'll have a whole squadron of helicopters flying over London with loud, mounted speakers underneath them, you see.
John: That's fantastic, yeah.
George: And every rock group in the world, in London, all on top of the buildings playing the same tunes.
Michael Lindsay-Hogg: This will edit fine, because we've got all the cops, which we covered downstairs as well. The bad thing was that not enough people in the street could see us. Is there a concert next week? What are you feeling about today? Do you want to work more today or not?
Paul: Yes, we should record the others now.
Michael Lindsay-Hogg: We've got to get the stuff down first.
George: We'll have a break for a bit.
Paul: We'll have lunch and that and then we'll record the other stuff we didn't do up there. The acoustic stuff.
George: There won't be more rooftops.
Paul: No more rooftops. That was the rooftop. That's it, but we'll do it down here and you'll sort of film it and clap us like the rooftop.
George: If we got the police, we could pretend in the film that we had to get down because of them and that here we are doing it.
John: It's just the way it happened. It'll just be it.
George: If anybody wants to sing and play on their roof, what's the law say as to why you can't do that?
John: Disturbing the peace.
George: How disturbing the peace?
Paul: Peace means like peace, the noise, they think peace is noise.
John: Well, they may as well ban planes and cars.
Michael Lindsay-Hogg: Disturbing the peace mans traffic jams, people, planes, that sort of thing.
John: With a bit of doctoring, we'll be good. I missed a line on "Don't Let Me Down." Can you use another shot?
Paul: We'll edit it.
George Martin: It's come off actually much better than I thought it would.
John: Yes, just the whole scene is fantastic!
George Martin: As Michael was saying, this is a very good dry run for something else too, apart from the value of its own as it stands.
George: Yeah, I think for taking over London.
John: Try the Hilton tomorrow.
George Martin: The idea is, we'll have a whole squadron of helicopters flying over London with loud, mounted speakers underneath them, you see.
John: That's fantastic, yeah.
George: And every rock group in the world, in London, all on top of the buildings playing the same tunes.
Michael Lindsay-Hogg: This will edit fine, because we've got all the cops, which we covered downstairs as well. The bad thing was that not enough people in the street could see us. Is there a concert next week? What are you feeling about today? Do you want to work more today or not?
Paul: Yes, we should record the others now.
Michael Lindsay-Hogg: We've got to get the stuff down first.
George: We'll have a break for a bit.
Paul: We'll have lunch and that and then we'll record the other stuff we didn't do up there. The acoustic stuff.
George: There won't be more rooftops.
Paul: No more rooftops. That was the rooftop. That's it, but we'll do it down here and you'll sort of film it and clap us like the rooftop.
George: If we got the police, we could pretend in the film that we had to get down because of them and that here we are doing it.
John: It's just the way it happened. It'll just be it.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Ringo Starr on Acting in Candy, 1969
"In Candy, I tried very hard to be convincing as the Mexican gardener. I'd read the book and realized that Emmanuelle was a very nervous sort of fellow. I was nervous too, as it happens. And that was how I played the part. I personally was happy with the result. It was a very good film and will make a lot of money. But people couldn't seem to forget it was me. I would really like to convince people that I can play someone else. In the first two Beatles films, it wasn't really acting. We didn't know what we were doing. We just said the lines as they were. We had read them and then we would just go out and say them in front of the cameras."
Monday, December 27, 2010
George Harrison on Cream's "Badge" (1969)
"I helped Eric write 'Badge.' Each of them had to come up with a song for the Goodbye Cream album and Eric didn't have his written. We were working across from each other and I was writing the lyrics down and we came to the middle part, so I wrote down 'bridge.' Eric read it upside down, and cracked up laughing. 'What's "badge?"' he asked. After that, Ringo walked in drunk and gave us that line about the swans living in the park."
Sunday, December 26, 2010
John Lennon on "Because"
"This is about me and Yoko in the early days. Yoko was playing some Beethoven chords and I said play them backwards. It's really 'Moonlight Sanata' backwards."
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Merry Chrimble: The Curious Case Of The Beatles Christmas Records
by Roger Cormier
Despite the fact that none of them were available on iTunes until a few weeks ago, it's a safe bet that most people on planet Earth have heard most of the 196 songs The Beatles wrote and recorded. (Somehow they heard them. Somehow.) What most people have never heard are the seven records that the Beatles recorded and sent out to fan club members exclusively every holiday season. Because The Beatles were The Beatles, they made a seemingly perfunctory exercise in appeasing a fan base and justifying a yearly fan club fee into entertaining clusterfucks that can at times be mistaken for true art.
1963
In the beginning, they kept it simple, simply getting high on egg nog and reading copy. John is the loud drunk at the holiday party, shouting nonsense in lieu of singing the actual lyrics to holiday songs and dominating most of the conversation (sometimes in German for no apparent reason). He also leads the group in inventing the phrase "Merry Crimble", an interesting substitute for "Happy Holidays." Meanwhile Paul is his own diplomatic charming self, thanking all of the fans for making them about to be millionaires but letting them kindly know they're no longer into jelly beans (save those for Reagan). Ringo, as expected, gets the least airtime and barely gets one sentence out without being tickled or interrupted. George gives props to the fan club secretaries ("Good old Frita!"). He hopes they can go on "pleasing you" for a long time, a reference to their number one hit "Please Please Me", which is totally about oral sex (John Lennon was, of course, the writer of that song).
Drug of choice: Alcohol
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "Thank you Ringo. We'll phone you..."
1964
Paul leads off after a little piano intro by unsuccessfully swallowing a smile in admitting he's now fucking rich. John does not even bother pretending that he isn't reading off of a script as he thanks fans for buying his Lewis Carroll wordplay inspired book "In His Own Write". Taking John's lead, George also doesn't bother with the pretense and even points out the typos while thanking the Beatle People for seeing their movie "A Hard Day's Night", sometimes "more than once." (cha chinggggg.) Ringo's attempts at playing it straight fail when the other three keep giggling and distract him.
Drug of choice: Pot, Alcohol
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "Don't know where we'd be without (the fans)." "In the army."
1965
Eschewing the taking turns in their mocking script reading routine, the Fabs stumble their way through singing "Yesterday" and mash-ups of Christmas songs with contemporary music numbers (including a funny piss-take on Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" which many considered at the time to be a lame Dylan ripoff.) While the group bothered with rehearsing their lines, manager Brian Epstein probably wasn't a fan of Lennon's Goon Show inspired fake newscaster bit or of the Vietnam references on a holiday record.
Drug of choice: Pot, Alcohol
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "Copyright Johnny!"
1966
Instead of parody, by 1966 the Beatles decided to reinvent the Holiday record: after the group goes through one verse and chorus of an original Christmas tune called "Everywhere It's Christmas", listeners are treated to vignettes involving two cheese eaters high in the Swiss Alps, a festive evening at the King's, a toast to her Highness on the H.M.S. Tremendous, Podgy and Jasper's trip to the supermarket and a Count Boulder leading a singalong about growing sick of banjos before returning back to "Everywhere It's Christmas". It's either genius or insanity. Or both. Or just British humor.
Drug of choice: LSD (John, George and Ringo), Pot (Paul)
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "Candles." "Matches." "Candles." "Matches."
1967
This record is similar to the 1966 one, but better. Instead of simply bookending an original holiday song, the Beatles stop "Christmas Time Is Here Again" for sometimes minutes at a time to get their bits in. These involve the gang auditioning at BBC House by singing two lines of a song about trousers (which we hear once again for good measure), Ringo as a General poorly elaborating on the job him and his troops had done, the group topping their earlier trouser song with a song about jam jars, George receiving applause and a nomination for independent candidate of parliament by erroneously claiming he is 32 and Ringo failing to make a phone call with his life seemingly hanging in the balance, as we are lead to believe with ridiculously dramatic sound effects. The last minute of the record devolves into the group maniacally laughing, followed by their producer George Martin announcing that they thank you for a wonderful year, in an "I know they seem fucking insane but they really mean well" tone.
Drugs of choice: LSD
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "And with the recent heavy fighting near Blackpool Mrs. Gee Evans of Sully Hall is gradually injured. She wants for all the people in hospital: 'Plenty of Jam Jars' by the Ravelers."
1968
The Beatles were a band that always evolved, and within a year, the band went from wildly inventive to incredibly depressing with their 1968 Christmas single. Because of all of their fighting, the band found their yearly fan club obligation of making a Christmas single to be a chore and literally mailed in their performances - all four of the Moptoppers recorded their greetings from their houses, with the exception of Ringo, who supposedly taped his from the back of his van in Surrey.
Radio 1 disc jockey Kenny Everett pieced together the snippets he received with clips from the just released White Album to make the record. Contents include a poem John wrote about Yoko and himself and George finally giving longtime roadie Mal Evans his due.
Who profited the most from the four Beatles not bothering to be in the same room with each other around the holidays? Tiny Tim, who George had perform his, uh, unique, cover of "Nowhere Man" while on vacation in America.
Goddamn Yoko ruined Christmas.
Drugs of choice: Heroin (John), Downers, Women
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "Well I think it's INSANE!!!!!!!!"
1969
1969 had a man land on the moon, but it didn't include The Beatles getting all of their asses in the recording studio for Christmas.
The funniest segment of the 1969 Christmas record would have to be that George Harrison contributed only one entire sentence to the festivities, possibly for punishment over inviting Tiny Tim over to the party the previous year. The second funniest aspect would have to be Ringo taking the rare opportunity to sing and to shamelessly promote his critically panned movie The Magic Christian. John wishing to have his cornflakes blessed in a specific manner was also humorous, but was overshadowed by him and Yoko taking up most of the record with their newlywed bliss and wishing of peace in the seventies. There wouldn't be nearly as much peace as the power couple was hoping for in that decade, and perhaps not coincidentally, the decade would be one without The Beatles.
Drugs of choice: Cocaine, Alcohol, Women
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "I'd like some cornflakes prepared by a Peruvian hand and have it blessed by a Hare Krishna mantra."
Despite the fact that none of them were available on iTunes until a few weeks ago, it's a safe bet that most people on planet Earth have heard most of the 196 songs The Beatles wrote and recorded. (Somehow they heard them. Somehow.) What most people have never heard are the seven records that the Beatles recorded and sent out to fan club members exclusively every holiday season. Because The Beatles were The Beatles, they made a seemingly perfunctory exercise in appeasing a fan base and justifying a yearly fan club fee into entertaining clusterfucks that can at times be mistaken for true art.
1963
In the beginning, they kept it simple, simply getting high on egg nog and reading copy. John is the loud drunk at the holiday party, shouting nonsense in lieu of singing the actual lyrics to holiday songs and dominating most of the conversation (sometimes in German for no apparent reason). He also leads the group in inventing the phrase "Merry Crimble", an interesting substitute for "Happy Holidays." Meanwhile Paul is his own diplomatic charming self, thanking all of the fans for making them about to be millionaires but letting them kindly know they're no longer into jelly beans (save those for Reagan). Ringo, as expected, gets the least airtime and barely gets one sentence out without being tickled or interrupted. George gives props to the fan club secretaries ("Good old Frita!"). He hopes they can go on "pleasing you" for a long time, a reference to their number one hit "Please Please Me", which is totally about oral sex (John Lennon was, of course, the writer of that song).
Drug of choice: Alcohol
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "Thank you Ringo. We'll phone you..."
1964
Paul leads off after a little piano intro by unsuccessfully swallowing a smile in admitting he's now fucking rich. John does not even bother pretending that he isn't reading off of a script as he thanks fans for buying his Lewis Carroll wordplay inspired book "In His Own Write". Taking John's lead, George also doesn't bother with the pretense and even points out the typos while thanking the Beatle People for seeing their movie "A Hard Day's Night", sometimes "more than once." (cha chinggggg.) Ringo's attempts at playing it straight fail when the other three keep giggling and distract him.
Drug of choice: Pot, Alcohol
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "Don't know where we'd be without (the fans)." "In the army."
1965
Eschewing the taking turns in their mocking script reading routine, the Fabs stumble their way through singing "Yesterday" and mash-ups of Christmas songs with contemporary music numbers (including a funny piss-take on Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" which many considered at the time to be a lame Dylan ripoff.) While the group bothered with rehearsing their lines, manager Brian Epstein probably wasn't a fan of Lennon's Goon Show inspired fake newscaster bit or of the Vietnam references on a holiday record.
Drug of choice: Pot, Alcohol
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "Copyright Johnny!"
1966
Instead of parody, by 1966 the Beatles decided to reinvent the Holiday record: after the group goes through one verse and chorus of an original Christmas tune called "Everywhere It's Christmas", listeners are treated to vignettes involving two cheese eaters high in the Swiss Alps, a festive evening at the King's, a toast to her Highness on the H.M.S. Tremendous, Podgy and Jasper's trip to the supermarket and a Count Boulder leading a singalong about growing sick of banjos before returning back to "Everywhere It's Christmas". It's either genius or insanity. Or both. Or just British humor.
Drug of choice: LSD (John, George and Ringo), Pot (Paul)
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "Candles." "Matches." "Candles." "Matches."
1967
This record is similar to the 1966 one, but better. Instead of simply bookending an original holiday song, the Beatles stop "Christmas Time Is Here Again" for sometimes minutes at a time to get their bits in. These involve the gang auditioning at BBC House by singing two lines of a song about trousers (which we hear once again for good measure), Ringo as a General poorly elaborating on the job him and his troops had done, the group topping their earlier trouser song with a song about jam jars, George receiving applause and a nomination for independent candidate of parliament by erroneously claiming he is 32 and Ringo failing to make a phone call with his life seemingly hanging in the balance, as we are lead to believe with ridiculously dramatic sound effects. The last minute of the record devolves into the group maniacally laughing, followed by their producer George Martin announcing that they thank you for a wonderful year, in an "I know they seem fucking insane but they really mean well" tone.
Drugs of choice: LSD
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "And with the recent heavy fighting near Blackpool Mrs. Gee Evans of Sully Hall is gradually injured. She wants for all the people in hospital: 'Plenty of Jam Jars' by the Ravelers."
1968
The Beatles were a band that always evolved, and within a year, the band went from wildly inventive to incredibly depressing with their 1968 Christmas single. Because of all of their fighting, the band found their yearly fan club obligation of making a Christmas single to be a chore and literally mailed in their performances - all four of the Moptoppers recorded their greetings from their houses, with the exception of Ringo, who supposedly taped his from the back of his van in Surrey.
Radio 1 disc jockey Kenny Everett pieced together the snippets he received with clips from the just released White Album to make the record. Contents include a poem John wrote about Yoko and himself and George finally giving longtime roadie Mal Evans his due.
Who profited the most from the four Beatles not bothering to be in the same room with each other around the holidays? Tiny Tim, who George had perform his, uh, unique, cover of "Nowhere Man" while on vacation in America.
Goddamn Yoko ruined Christmas.
Drugs of choice: Heroin (John), Downers, Women
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "Well I think it's INSANE!!!!!!!!"
1969
1969 had a man land on the moon, but it didn't include The Beatles getting all of their asses in the recording studio for Christmas.
The funniest segment of the 1969 Christmas record would have to be that George Harrison contributed only one entire sentence to the festivities, possibly for punishment over inviting Tiny Tim over to the party the previous year. The second funniest aspect would have to be Ringo taking the rare opportunity to sing and to shamelessly promote his critically panned movie The Magic Christian. John wishing to have his cornflakes blessed in a specific manner was also humorous, but was overshadowed by him and Yoko taking up most of the record with their newlywed bliss and wishing of peace in the seventies. There wouldn't be nearly as much peace as the power couple was hoping for in that decade, and perhaps not coincidentally, the decade would be one without The Beatles.
Drugs of choice: Cocaine, Alcohol, Women
Best Liverpoolian witticism: "I'd like some cornflakes prepared by a Peruvian hand and have it blessed by a Hare Krishna mantra."
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