The Beatles Anthology
Beatles members Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr participated in the making of the works, which are sometimes referred to collectively as the Anthology project, while John Lennon appears in archival interviews.
They included unreleased performances and outtakes presented in roughly chronological order, along with two new songs based on demo tapes recorded by Lennon after the group broke up: "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love", both produced by Jeff Lynne.
Footage in the Anthology series features voice-over recordings of all four Beatles to push the narrative of the story, with contributions from their producer, road manager and others.
The series, which included over 5000 hours of planning and production, is composed of numerous film clips and interviews that present a complete history of the band from the Beatles' own personal perspectives.
The third collection featured out-takes and demos from The Beatles ("White Album"), Let It Be and Abbey Road, as well as several songs from Harrison and McCartney which later became post-Beatle tracks.
During the music video for "Free as a Bird", the Anthology collage appears as posters on a shop window as the camera pans quickly across the street.
The book is designed as a large-format hardback, with imaginative artwork throughout, and several visually vibrant and colourful spreads featuring graphics relevant to the proceeding chronology, photographic arrays and a variety of text styles and layouts.
[5] During early 1995, as work on The Beatles Anthology continued, Yoko Ono and McCartney recorded an avant-garde piece called "Hiroshima Sky Is Always Blue".
[7] It was reported that McCartney, Harrison and Starr worked on a new composition called "All for Love" in March 1995, intended as a track on Anthology 3, but the effort was abandoned.
McCartney, Harrison, Starr, and Jeff Lynne attempted a full band recording of Lennon's song "Now and Then" using his demo vocals, intending it to anchor Anthology 3.
The poor fidelity and excessive ambient noise of the original tape proved too difficult to alleviate with contemporary digital equipment, and the song was abandoned.
In October 1996 there was a strictly limited release from EMI, a slip case cover to house all three CD volumes, which have since become extremely rare, fetching high prices among collectors.
On Late Night with Conan O'Brien the host had the remaining Beatles adding music and doing backup singing to a fictitious vocal track of John Lennon's answering machine message.
