The Beatles Anthology

Okay?

Can the other boys put their headphones on too, Paul?

John, can you put your cans on?

George?

Just throw 'em in somewhere, you know.

No, I think it should start...

- Okay, shall we go? - Will you just shout in, you know.

- Rolling. - Right. Here we go.

And build up the beginning.

Well, you do the count-in then.

The beginning's different now. Okay?

- Yeah. - Ready?

I'll lower the mic accordingly.

One, two, three, four.

Are you rolling?

What have I told you?

-Thank you. -

Buggers, you can't keep 'em off.

- -Hi.

So do you think that the Anthology...

Oh no. It couldn't have been done then.

-No. It could only have been done now. -We were...

-We were at war then. -We weren't talking much.

And also, even if we had have done it then,

it wouldn't have been as interesting

as leaving it for twenty years.

-Twenty-five. -Oh, yeah.

A while ago, when we got over our business troubles,

we sort of decided that we might try and do,

like, the definitive story of the Beatles,

seeing as other people had had a go at it.

We thought it might be good from the inside out

rather than from the outside in.

We've heard it from everybody else,

now you can hear it from us.

Paul, George and myself, old footage of John, of course,

telling how we felt it was like to be a Beatle.

Okay?

It became a project that, uh, we did bits of work on

over the years, and then the last few years now,

we started doing interviews.

- Okay? Turn over. - Yeah, I'm running.

And then building the story around our recollections.

So where were we? Ask me the question again.

The original cut of this was 1970.

That's how long it's been around.

And then it got broke down. And Neil was involved.

Neil Aspinall was involved from the start.

He put it together.

Then we couldn't deal with it, you know?

It's like everything comes round when it should.

I just called them all, you know,

and said that, uh, you know, everybody else and his uncle

seems to have written or talked about the Beatles.

And that maybe, you know, just for ourselves,

they should tell their own story, right?

We'd put some film around it,

and we'd all have a whole movie.

I think it was the early '70s, '70, '71.

I collected, uh, all the footage

that I could find from around the world,

and we put a documentary together, or a film together,

without the Beatles being interviewed

or anything like that. Then I put it on the shelf.

Neil had strung together basically all the footage

we'd, um, filmed of ourselves, or we owned of ourselves,

and whatever footage he could get hold of,

and he put it in a chronological order,

and that was tentatively titled The Long And Winding Road,

but that was back in '71

when we'd had enough of all that.

- - And I'm glad it didn't

get made until now. I think it's been nice for us

and the public just to forget about the Beatles for a while,

-let the dust settle... -

...and now come back to it

There was this one that went...

Oh no.

Yeah.

Over the last four years,

'cause we've been working on it

for the last four years, really...

okay, you know.

We went through the stage of the three of us

saying hello in different situations,

restaurants, offices.

And then we started working together.

And then, of course, it ends up with us recording together.

Twenty-one minutes late already.

Oh, what do you wanna do? Take it out me wages?

- - What's that?

- Hello. - Hello, George.

- Hi, man. - Hi, Paul.

-Hello, Neil. - How are you?

Hello, George. Very well, thank you.

Nice to see you. Very nice.

Oh, hello, vegetarian leather jacket?

- -Yeah. Yes. Yes, it is.

Yeah. Yes, it is.

And boots are vegetarian leather boots.

-Hello, darling. - Hi, sweetie.

Do you want me to kiss you?

Yeah. I always like a little peck.

- Yes, okay. - How are you doing?

-Linda: Oh, no! - Hi.

- Hi. - Lovely, thanks, yeah.

- Hi. - Barbara, how are you?

-How're you? - Hiya. Not bad. Good.

Hello, darling.

Oh, so we've got all the girls now.

Hello. - Kisses. Kisses. Hello.

- There you are. -There we are. How's the light?

It's wonderful.

Could you do something exciting, please?

One, two... Huh!

a lot of good memories,

and it also gave me a chance to hang out with, uh,

Paul and George again.

The best thing was the three of us sitting around.

I don't think we did it right.

It wasn't like that, though, was it?

We could kick in with each other. "What?"

"Oh, do you remember that?" "No." "Oh, that's..."

"Yeah, I remember now."

- Who is this? - That's John.

- - John Lennon of the Beatles

The good thing about the Anthology

is that it's four of us.

You know, even though John's not here, he's here.

He's represented. He talks.

Okay, it's old interviews and stuff.

It doesn't matter. It's still he's there.

You know, his point of view comes over.

People demand that you think, "How long are you gonna last?"

Well, you can't say, you know. You can be big-headed and say,

"Yeah, we're going to last ten years."

But as soon as you've said that, you think, you know,

"We're lucky if we last three months."

It was interesting to actually get back together.

You know, in some way I feel sorry for John because,

you know, the Beatles went through

a lot of good times,

but also went through some turbulent times.

And as everybody knows, you know, when we split up,

kind of, everybody was a bit fed up with each other, but...

for Ringo, Paul and I, we've had the opportunity

to, like, have all that go down the river

and under the bridge and to get together again

in a new light.

And I feel a bit sorry that John wasn't able to do that.

I think he would have really enjoyed this opportunity

to be with us again.

We'd all had enough time to breathe,

and I think it's much easier to...

to look at it now from a distance.

We started off trying to make the definitive story

of the Beatles and ended up realizing

that it's almost impossible to get the definitive story

because people look at things from different points of view.

The Beatles Anthology is as much of the history of the Beatles

that we can possibly get.

If I was doing my anthology, it would be different.

You know, I'd have different things in.

Uh, George the same, Paul the same.

And, you know, that's how it works.

This is the thing, you see, everybody sees life

as it's happening through their own eyes.

Certainly, when you get a situation

like the Beatles' story,

everybody had their own idea of what happened.

I mean, I found out more than I ever knew

about the other guys from the Anthology.

It's like memoirs, you know, there it all suddenly is.

There they are, the hippest group in history.

At the beginning,

...Paul was the only one who would sleep with me.

Well, there was actually a little bit...

- -...of a thing to that.

-I was never very prejudiced. - No.

- No, I thought... -What was it?

...that was the best move, really, because when you joined,

and you were, like, the new fella...

- Sure. -...and nobody...

And I thought, well, if I hang out with you,

then they'll all be like, you know...

So I thought it'd be good to, you know...

Put Paul with him.