It’s undoubtedly one of music’s greatest watches. The eight-part Beatles Anthology, first aired on the UK's ITV back in 1995 and on ABC in the US, allowed the then-surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, to tell their incredible story in their own words.
Interspersed archive interview clips with the late John Lennon added his crucial perspective on key moments in their narrative. Packed with music, interview clips and insights, the documentary has been a long-cherished central resource for Beatle fans since it first aired. The expanded DVD set, released in 2003, still proudly sits on many a Beatle-nut's shelf.
On November 26th, a remastered version of the Anthology documentary series will premiere on Disney+. Starting with the first three parts, the rest will be dropped in batches of three over the following two days.
Alongside considerably spruced-up picture and audio, the series now sports an all-new ninth episode.
Directed by Oliver Murray, this new episode compiles never before seen footage and interviews conducted with Paul, George and Ringo during the making of the Anthology (a project which also included a three-volume outtakes/live compilation and a coffee-table book), and during the recording of the singles Free as a Bird and Real Love.
On Monday November 17th, a new trailer - featuring a smattering of new footage - was released, which you can watch below:
Restored by the Apple Corps production team and Peter Jackson’s Wingnut Films and Park Road Post, the documentary series has a particular labour of love for Giles Martin, the son of the Beatles’ legendary producer George Martin, who sadly died back in 2016.
Giles has rightfully served as the custodian of the Beatles' production legacy ever since he worked on the Love soundtrack back in 2006. He's subsequently been pivotal to the remastering of their back catalogue, as well as the Peter Jackson-helmed Get Back project in 2021.
Giles spoke to the BBC’s Dermot O'Leary’s Saturday Morning Breakfast show about the process of remastering both the series and the accompanying three albums of studio outtakes and live performances (which has also been bolstered by the all-new compilation, Anthology 4, and will be released as a box set on November 21st)
Firstly, Giles recalled that at the time the Anthology project was first mooted, his father had semi-retired from the professional sphere. “I remember my dad saying to me ‘I’ve been asked to work on a Beatles project’. It was the first time since 1970 I think,” Giles told the BBC.
Giles recollected that at that moment in time, his father had started losing his hearing, and needed the teenage Giles to serve as his ears in the studio. “I’d just come out of Manchester University. He’d lost his hearing at that stage and he just asked if I wanted to come in," Giles recounted. "We used to sit at a piano and he’d show me what notes he could no longer hear.”
Of that specific time when the Anthology was being assembled, Giles recalled that everybody got on well. He shared his view that much of the drama written about the Beatles’ interpersonal relationships have been greatly exaggerated by journalists and myth-makers.
“I think they had [buried hatchets]. A lot of what you read about the Beatles, which I’ve learned from the tapes, isn’t true. There wasn’t massive arguments in the Beatles. The arguments happened afterwards. [When they were] talking about a relationship after it ended. George and Ringo were best friends anyway - they remained best friends the whole time.”
Giles also points to the fractious rift between Paul and John after the Beatles dissolution as more indicative of an underlying truth. “Paul and John were best friends,” Martin asserted. “At the height of their fame and everything that happened afterwards it just became difficult to maintain that."
Martin then went on to explain that the tragic murder of John in 1980 galvanised the surviving Beatles and would ultimately be a drive for them to create the Anthology.
Martin couldn’t recall who it was exactly that initially proposed the Anthology project, but shared that Paul was often a chief instigator of the band’s projects (i.e. Sgt Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour and as evidenced throughout Get Back). The most recent Paul-initiated project, being the Now and Then single. Which we unpacked in our fascinating track deconstruction with Giles earlier this year.
“Paul started Now and Then," Giles told the BBC. "Ringo used to say that the Beatles would have only made three albums if it wasn’t for Paul. They’d be sitting in the garden and the phone would ring and they’d go ‘oh god, it’s him again!’”
When asked whether the Anthology represented a sense of closure for the surviving Beatles, Giles agreed, “I think they have closure, and all of them had closure in different ways. I think that what happens with the Beatles, is that - as George says in the documentary - it stops being ‘us’ and the Beatles belong to the world. Kids find Beatles songs. A little Beatles goes a long way to making people feel good.
"There’s never going to be a full stop to the Beatles. They’re now part of culture and legacy and we should be proud of that.”
The remastered Beatles Anthology 2025 series premieres on November 26th on Disney+
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