Beatles Anthology by Beatles, Various

From Barnes & Noble

The quintessential Beatles book: In 300,000 words and 1,300 images, the Fab Four present a personal history of their epoch-making group. This book is, in effect, the Beatles' autobiography.

From the Publisher

The international best-seller is now in paperback! From their years growing up in Liverpool through their ride to fame to their ultimate breakup, here s the inside story. Interwoven with The Beatles own memories are the recollections of such associates as road manager Neil Aspinall, producer George Martin, and spokesman Derek Taylor. The Beatles Anthology is a once-in-a-lifetime volume: warm, frank, funny, poignant, and bold-just like the music that s been a part of so many of our lives. The Beatles Anthology is, for the first time, the story of The Beatles by The Beatles. Created with the full cooperation of Paul, George, Ringo, and Yoko Ono Lennon, it also includes the words of John, painstakingly compiled from sources worldwide. The Beatles Anthology is, in effect, The Beatles autobiography. The Beatles Anthology features over 1300 images, most previously unpublished. Paul, George, Ringo, and Yoko Ono Lennon all opened their own archives just for this project, as did Apple, EMI, and others long associated with The Beatles, allowing the unprecedented release of photographs, documents, and other memorabilia from their homes and offices. The result is an extraordinary wealth of visual material brimming on each and every page.

London Sunday Telegraph

The book will provide the frankest account yet of the band's rise to the top of the pop world in the 1960s...

Publishers Weekly

"Who knows why the Beatles happened?" John Lennon asked in 1980: if anyone did, it would be the Fab Four themselves, who tell their own story--with plenty of visual aids--in this giant compendium. Festooned with more than 1,300 photographs, posters and documents (many in color), the weighty (6.6 lbs.) volume offers the Beatles' "own permanent written record of events up to 1970," some of it previously published, but much of it transcribed from new or unpublished interviews. Paul, George, Ringo and Beatles-related folks (Brian Epstein, George Martin, Derek Taylor) contribute text from interviews conducted for the book and for an accompanying TV program. Words from the late John Lennon have been gathered from print, broadcast and manuscripts (each with an indicated date), then spliced together to create coherent pages and paragraphs. The book opens with the band members' separate accounts of their childhoods, then moves into a year-by-year organization that allows for great detail and many digressions. Here are what the Beatles have said, or say now, about particular sessions and gigs. Here, too, are comments and reminiscences on every topic in their career-- from marijuana to Manila to Murray the K, from Hamburg to "A Hard Day's Night" to "Hey, Jude." Most of the text appears oral-history style, in short paragraphs with rapid switches between one Beatle and another: the format makes it sound as if all the Beatles (including John) were being interviewed simultaneously. The visuals bring in cartoons, signed letters, scrawled drawings and photos. As a whole the volume is beautiful, big and a bit intimidating, somewhere between the Yellow Submarine and the Death Star. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Hyped, anticipated, and cloaked in secrecy, the Beatles' autobiography is articulately told through quotes from John, Paul, George, and Ringo, as well as the group's closest aides: George Martin, Neil Aspinall, and Derek Taylor. Taken largely from interviews for 1995's Beatles Anthology documentary, the quotes were further expanded by interviews exclusive to the book. Lennon's quotes are seamlessly cobbled together from scores of sources (listed in the back) and smoothly integrated with the others' comments. Topics are discussed in more depth than the film, though a few significant career points (e.g., the "Lady Madonna" single) are ignored. Many of the over 1300 images come from the private archives of EMI Records, the Beatles' own Apple Corps., and the band members themselves. Unfortunately, the lavish design sometimes takes precedence over substance, as many previously unseen documents, including original hand-written drafts of song lyrics, are hard to read because the texts are either superimposed in color onto other illustrations or are printed like a watermark behind the main text. Captions for only a small percentage of the illustrations are listed in an appendix, often making the reader flip to the back to look for a caption that doesn't exist. The density of the text is daunting, but the book's browsability makes it as appealing to casual readers as it is indispensable to Beatlemaniacs. Despite its price, this is essential for most libraries.--Lloyd Jansen, Stockton-San Joaquin Cty. P.L. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

New York Times Book Review - Mim Udovitch

Entertaining and, to a degree that depends on your previous grasp of the information, informative...Anthology also highlights, as no work by an outsider could, how close the members of the group really were to one another...

Washington Post Book Review - Futterman

In effect, the Beatles tell their own story, without critical commentary. Revelatory pictures, many never seen before, accompany the text.

What makes this oral history of the band gripping is not only the documentation of their spectacular rise and rancorous fall but the ample evidence that each Beatle was smart and self-aware (yes, Ringo too).

Product Details

• Interviews & Essays

Interviews & Essays

John: "The Sixties saw a revolution among youth--not just concentrating in small pockets or classes, but a revolution in a whole way of thinking. The youth got it first and the next generation second. The Beatles were part of the revolution, which is really an evolution, and is continuing. We were all on this ship--a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow's nest."

Paul: "To thine own self be true." I think that was very apt with The Beatles. We always were very true to ourselves--and I think that the brutal honesty The Beatles had was important. So sticking to our own guns and really saying what we thought in some way gave some other people in the world the idea that they too could be truthful and get away with it, and in fact it was a good thing."

George: "The moral of the story is that if you accept the high points you're going to have to go through the lows. For The Beatles, our lives were a very heightened version of that: of how to learn about love and hate, and up and down, and good and bad, and loss and gain. It was a hyper-version of what everybody else was going through. So, basically, it's all good. Whatever happened is good as long as we've learnt something. It's only bad if we didn't learn: "Who am I? Where am I going? Where have I come from?"

Ringo: "They became the closest friends I'd ever had. I was an only and suddenly I felt as though I'd got three brothers. We really looked out for each other and we had many laughs together. In the old days we'd have the hugest hotel suites, the whole floor of a hotel, and the four of us would end up in the bathroom, just to be with each other."