The Beatles Anthology

The Beatles Anthology At last! The Beatles always complained that the press never got it right and only they themselves could properly tell their life story. Now they have, and it is a fascinating document. The book is splendidly illustrated with hundreds of rare photographs, handwritten song lyrics and personal letters, some quite revealing. See, for example, the letter John Lennon and George Harrison sent Paul McCartney on March 31, 1970. At the time, the Beatles had secretly agreed to break up?"I'm leaving the group," John declared one day?but the door remained open to a rapprochement. John and George's note, however, presents Paul with a fateful fait accompli: they say they have directed EMI Records to hold Paul's forthcoming solo album until after both the Beatles' Let It Be and Ringo Starr's solo album have been released. "We're sorry it turned out like this?it's nothing personal," John and George write before signing off with "Love John and George and Hare Krishna." But for McCartney, it was the last straw. Ten days later, he publicly announced the Beatles had split and there was no turning back. The book also provides the most authoritative account yet of the key role Yoko Ono played in the group's dissolution. Perhaps because all the lawsuits have finally been settled, perhaps because they knew they were speaking to history, the surviving Beatles mince no words here about how Yoko's arrival in 1968 undermined the unity and camaraderie so crucial to their success. John insisted on having Yoko beside him at all times, even in the studio, the one place the Beatles had always reserved for just the four of them. And Yoko "didn't really like us," George now recalls, "because she saw The Beatles as something that was between her and John. The vibe I picked up was that she was a wedge that was trying to drive itself deeper and deeper between him and us, and it actually happened."

Such blunt talk is remarkable considering that Ono presumably could have tried to veto it from the text. This book, after all, is the third and final installment of the Beatles' multimedia autobiography project, which began in 1995 with the release of tapes from the Abbey Road Studio archives (some of which I was lucky enough to hear before breaking the story of the Beatles' reunion in The New Yorker). Part two of the Anthology was an eight-part video series, interviews for which provided most of the quotes used in this book. The entire Anthology is a product of Apple, the company the Beatles founded in 1968 to handle their business affairs. Major decisions at Apple reportedly have always been made by the four Beatles themselves, with Ono exercising Lennon's vote after his death in 1980. One can't help wondering what the vote was on the final text of this book, though of course Apple isn't saying.

In any case, this book covers far more than the unpleasantness of the Beatles' final days. Its depiction of how Beatlemania looked and felt to the four young men at the eye of the storm invokes sympathy for the drudgery and dangers they endured, not to mention the nonstop demands on their time and privacy. "From the moment we opened our eyes, people were trying to get at us," Ringo recalls. George says life as a Beatle "was like a straitjacket." The pressure got so bad, the Beatles claim, that they were actually relieved when the 1967 record "Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane" became their first single not to hit number one, even though producer George Martin considered the two songs "the best tracks they've ever made."

But don't cry too much for them?they had lots of fun along the way. Despite their "clean" early image, women were never far away; their recollections in this regard are tasteful but vivid. Still, the best times were when they were running around as a foursome. Racing sports cars through late-night London streets, John would demand that George pull over, shouting through a loudspeaker like a crazed policeman, "It is foolish to resist, it is foolish to resist." All four Beatles emphasize how much they laughed together in those days; it kept them sane while the world around them was going mad. Much of the laughter was marijuana-fueled, they now confess. That the Beatles used mind-expanding drugs is no secret. Never before, however, have they spoken in such detail about their experiences. George corrects John's claim that they smoked a joint in Buckingham Palace before Queen Elizabeth knighted them, but they were plainly big inhalers from the time Bob Dylan introduced them to pot in 1964, and they continue to insist today that both pot and LSD had great beneficial effect on them, not only as musicians but as citizens of the planet. Paul says he felt "betrayed" when, in a letter to President Nixon, Elvis Presley cited their drug use as evidence that the Beatles were "un-American," but that doesn't stop him or the others from recalling in warm detail the night they spent hanging out with the King.

What matters most about the Beatles, though, is the music. And while one occasionally wishes for greater explication of how one or another song was created, this book does quote Lennon and McCartney at length on how they worked (separately and together) and what their songs meant (and didn't). The Beatles' growing studio sophistication gradually turned them into "the workmen who took over the factory," says Paul. But George Martin, to his credit, was happy to give way, as is plain from this book's description of the recording of "Tomorrow Never Knows," the spooky, ethereal song from Revolver that launched the Beatles into psychedelia. Surrender of the ego was in fact one secret behind the uniformly high quality of their music, says Ringo: "Whoever had the best idea (it didn't matter who), that would be the one we'd use. No one was standing on their ego..."

This book's chief flaw is an unavoidable one: the quotes from John Lennon are drawn from press interviews and private writings done long ago. We don't hear Lennon reflect on the Beatles experience with the same depth of hindsight McCartney, Harrison and Starr bring to bear. One can only guess how Lennon's views might have evolved during the past 20 years. But the three surviving Beatles, at least, seem once again to be good friends, comfortable with the past and confident their work will stand the test of time. "The Beatles can't ever really split up," Harrison explains. "[The music] we did is still there and always will be."