Baby you can drive my car, and if you did, you would discover something fab. My 2007 Saab comes with a bonus feature — a “big screen” (for the time) entertainment centre. Even better, it came pre-loaded with all these “XM” satellite radio options, cutting age audio for my 9-3 Aero’s Bose speakers.
Nearly two decades later, those touch screen buttons have defaulted to a barker setting that tries too hard to sell SiriusXM. This past Black Friday weekend, however, they were fully operational. Suddenly, ’60s on 6; ’70s on 7; all-Elvis; and all-Beatles music stations were mine for the listening.
The Beatles button got pushed first. One program devoted to alternate takes added to Episode 4 of the updated, 2025 Beatles Anthology provided a new spin on some Hard Day’s Night and Help-era tunes. I also heard a slower, less bracing version of “Helter Skelter” that was coming down show and sounded cool.
Hearing these out-of-the-vault goodies tested my resistance to sample the new Beatles Anthology on Disney+. Listen, there is no bigger fan of the Fab Four, but after watching Peter Jackson’s lengthy Get Back docuseries, his update of the original “Let it Be” doc from 1970, Ron Howard’s “Beatles 64” tour feature and the video and mini-doc for “Now and Then” (2023), even I was Beatled out.
Still, I couldn’t resist checking out the new 9th episode of Anthology. This takes viewers behind the recording of the three “new” Beatle songs that were originally recorded for Anthology in 1994 and ’95. With John Lennon’s tragic death in 1980, surviving members Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are featured, teaming with producer Jeff Lynne on Lennon demos “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love.”
Have we seen this story before? Hell yes, on bonus features and as part of the “Now and Then” stuff. If you were hoping to see more informal jamming from the “Three-tles” beyond “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and “Thinking of Linking,” it either didn’t happen or wasn’t captured on film or video.
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There is a short sequence where the three sit with George Martin at a large mixing board and pull up snatches of “You Never Give Me Your Money.” That’s welcome, although McCartney and Harrison do not quite seem over hard feelings from the band’s break a quarter century earlier.
Ringo tries. In the scene where Paul and George sit on the grass playing ukelele’s, Ringo leans in and tells the other two that he “likes hanging out with you guys.” He was, after all the only child who gained three brothers with The Beatles.
Does this new Anthology episode feel “totally pointless” as The Guardian declared? I would never go that far. It is, at least, all organized and in one spot. Older fans may feel that the cupboard is bare, but the generation not born when the original came out 30 years ago (on VHS!) will now have it at their streaming fingertips.
Will their kids buy the AI version in another 30 years, the one where John and George are the survivors and we see what they make of Paul and Ringo’s demos? As if Peter Jackson isn’t already heading down that long and winding road.
