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List Price: $34.98 | | Label: Capitol
Salesrank: 1469
Released: November 21, 1995 |
| Our Price: $8.86 |
| Used Price: $6.90 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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Editorial Review:
3 LP set. No other band has had quite the same impact as the four lads from Liverpool. Over the course of eight years and more than a dozen albums, the Beatles changed popular music and culture forever, spearheading the 1960s British Invasion and shaping rock & roll along the way. Along with their amazing musical output and unprecedented worldwide celebrity, John, Paul, George, and Ringo were responsible for many pop music revolutions, major and minor--writing their own material, pushing the limits of the studio, making films of their music, printing song lyrics on albums--that today are taken for granted. Although the Beatles disbanded in 1970, their artistic legacy is permanently ingrained in the entire world's musical vocabulary. EMI. 2005.
Description of Anthology 1:
This is the first release in a three-part series that essentially amounted to the three surviving Beatles officially sanctioning the release of tracks that had been bootlegged for years. Thus, you get some of their earliest recordings as teens; the tracks they cut in Hamburg, Germany; their Decca audition tapes (which were rejected); and, finally, alternate takes and works in progress of songs that are now part of the world's consciousness. Oh, yeah, you also get "Free As a Bird," the John Lennon track the other Beatles "finished" in 1995; it's out of context in the company of some of the group's early classics. Beatlemaniacs, of course, love exploring this stuff, but the three Anthologies are hardly a place for beginners to start their explorations. --Bill Holdship
Anthology 1 Reviews:
Best of the Anthology Albums 
2009-08-27 - Great album. Has many early previously unreleased material including the Ed Sullivan show. Great to listen when you're in a funky Beatles mood to listen to something other than the standards.
Ah! The Old Stuff 
2009-07-20 - Well, before I go into an description of Anthology 1, I must say:
When I want to consider buying something, I read the "1 Star" reviews first. I want to see what people dislike about the product. I read the 1 star reviews for Anthology 1 & 2, and I found a very disturbing one about 2. It said that the Beatles were terrible, and thought they got too much credit. Well, the first thing I thought was: was the anthology the only thing you listened too? Because you can't make a good judgement if you have not listened to their actual records! Geez, how people jump right into an idea, and never come out.
The next 1 star review I read was about #1, and it complained about the poor quality of some of the songs, perticually the first couple on the 1st disk. I thought then: Well, of course it's bad quality because they made the early songs under bad recording devices! Once again the ingnorance of some people. I think ofr any Beatles fan the anthology would be a good addition to your collection. It has a lot of early stuff, not seen before. Also on the second disk includes different takes of the songs through Beatles For Sale, and live recordings.
You will also find interesting little speeches by the band, and others.
The Beatles Anthology 1
2009-07-04 - First of all Availability, value for money.
I was helped by the wide availability of titles and on the Amazon
Great for diehard fans. OK for others. 
2009-03-21 - The Beatles Anthology 1 is a staple of diehard Beatles fans. It contains clip after clip of sound bites and off-takes of popular tunes. If you're looking for a greatest hits collection, this is not it. If you want to learn more about the Fab Four's journey to find themselves and their music, this is the album.
Love it. But...
2009-02-26 - First of all, this set is great. No other band could do what The Beatles did (and most likely none ever will). My only quibble is with the amount of needless editing. Several tracks take a hard hit. 'Can't Buy Me Love' Take 2 - here with a guitar solo from take 1 crammed in for no good reason! Not only that but the booklet lists this as stereo and it is not. The full Take 2 has been on bootleg since the late '80's in stereo. Also edited is the 1963 take of 'One After 909'; understandable since two takes were used to create a master. But a much better edit was made for the aborted 'Sessions' album in 1984, with a better quality guitar solo. The track 'Shout!' from the BBC special Around The Beatles is included in true stereo, yet entire chunks of the song are missing, editing it down from over 2 minutes to under one and a half!
As I said the booklet lists many of the songs as being in stereo, yet if you really listen to them (like through headphones) you'll hear that they are at best 'mock stereo', at worst having only one instrument shuffled from one channel to the other. Listen to how the Beatles original 4-Track recordings were mixed compared to these outtakes from the same sessions. You'd think they'd have tried to mix them they way they did the 1960's originals for a more authentic sound.
All in all, this is a CD to get to be sure. But it won't kill bootleg recordings unless they quit editing things for no good reason.
