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Long ago, The Beatles ceased to be just a band: they have now passed into the realms of legend. And like most legends, a lot of the original reality has been distorted and turned into mythology. Even the music, once the cornerstone of the Beatles’ existence, has started to change. Once upon a time, there was an official canon of Beatle music: it started with Love Me Do and ended with Let It Be, and that – a few oddities apart – was it. But in the nineties, reality began to warp.
The three remaining Beatles got back together to rework some old John Lennon demos, including Free As A Bird and Real Love, released them as Beatles singles, and put them on three new compilations. The Anthology CDs weren’t pure archive either: they featured remixed songs, backing tracks, and Frankenstein assemblies of different takes.
The back catalogue was no longer sacred: it was as if someone had thrown all the tapes in the air and put them back together in a new, more modern order. Since then, there have been remixed Beatle collections (The Love Album), remixed Beatle movies (Get Back) and more new Beatle songs (Now And Then).
And now there is Anthology 4, which is not, as its title strongly hints, a further instalment in the Beatles’ story, but a compilation of (mostly) out-takes, remixes and cut-and-shut jobs. This time round, there are few surprises, largely because 23 of the 36 tracks on Anthology 4 have already been released on other collections: in fact, there are no surprises, no songs that fans have been hoping for since the dawn of time itself (Carnival Of Light, basically).
What we do get are 13 unreleased songs – mostly different takes and rehearsal versions – and an entire vinyl side dedicated to Free As A Bird, Real Love, and Now And Then, as if to say, yes, these are proper Beatles songs, just like She Loves You and Penny Lane.
As a collection, Anthology 4 charts a parallel path through the Beatles’ career, one with a tacky postscript in the 21st century. As a Beatles record, it is not very good, offering nothing exciting in terms of rarities (wow, the “strings only” version of Something from the Abbey Road 50th anniversary edition) or insight. The only good thing about it is that there isn’t an Anthology 5. Give it time, though…
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