‘The Beatles Anthology’ is fully restored by Peter Jackson’s team and expanded with a new episode on Disney+ for the documentary’s 30th anniversary.
Beatles bandmates McCartney, Starr perform classics during UK show
Paul McCartney brought out Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr during his Got Back tour stop in London.
- “The Beatles Anthology” will stream on Disney+ starting Nov. 26 to mark the 30th anniversary of the docuseries.
- “Get Back” director Peter Jackson and his team have restored the 1995 documentary, and Oliver Murray directs a new ninth episode with unseen footage.
- Giles Martin, son of George Martin, has remastered the music for the three companion “Anthology” albums and compiled a fourth volume of music.
The realization is sweet and slightly heartbreaking. The Beatles miss The Beatles, too.
Ringo Starr plaintively tells Paul McCartney and George Harrison that it’s been a “really beautiful” day as the three lounge on a blanket outside Harrison’s Friar Park home in a new ninth episode of “The Beatles Anthology” on Disney+. (Episodes 1-3 launch Nov. 26, followed by Episodes 4-6 on Nov. 27 and Episodes 7-9 on Nov. 28.)
It’s an unapologetically sentimental moment in the 51-minute coda to the 1995 docuseries. In a sneak peek at the episode provided to USA TODAY, the three old friends greet each other with hugs, happily jam together on “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and “Ain’t She Sweet,” and joke about teaming up for a stadium reunion tour.
Thirty years after ABC’s “Anthology” became a television sensation viewed by an estimated 420 million fans worldwide, the newly restored docuseries is returning for the long Thanksgiving weekend, spiffed up with 2025 technology by Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post production team. The three companion “Anthology” albums of rare recordings − freshly remastered by Giles Martin, son of longtime Beatles producer George Martin, who died in 2016 − are getting a fourth volume of 13 previous unreleased demos and session recordings (out Nov. 21).
For the new ninth episode, director Oliver Murray takes a similar approach to what Jackson did with the 2021 Beatles documentary “Get Back” (itself an expanded recut of 1970’s “Let It Be”): He pulls the camera back and shares never-seen moments that were nipped off in the original edit. One such standout is an intimate glimpse of the three Beatles’ wives (Linda McCartney, Olivia Harrison and Barbara Bach) warmly greeting the reunited bandmates.
The melancholic project plays like a farewell.
“It’s funny with The Beatles, you always feel there is an air of finality about things, and then people want more,” says Martin, who serves as music supervisor for the docuseries, and points to Sam Mendes’ four Beatles biopics (expected in 2028). “The music will never be final, which is the best thing I can say about The Beatles.”
Episode 9 focuses heavily on behind-the-scenes footage of McCartney, Harrison and Starr reminiscing, sifting through old session recordings and working on “Anthology” songs “Free as a Bird,” “Real Love” and “Now and Then.”
Among the new additions that fans can look forward to:
- There’s video of McCartney working out “Helter Skelter” on acoustic guitar − a wow moment that recalls Paul conjuring “Get Back” out of thin air in Jackson’s previous documentary.
- The three Beatles address why they nixed Apple head Neil Aspinall’s proposal for an official documentary in the early ’70s called “The Long and Winding Road.” All agree that the film couldn’t have been made even in 1975. “We were at war then,” McCartney says.
- Harrison receives a sizable share of screen time and is uncharacteristically wistful. He says he feels badly that John Lennon, who was fatally shot in 1980, didn’t get the closure of working on “Anthology”: “I think he would have enjoyed this opportunity to get together with us.”
- Starr gets the heartfelt final word. Hankies required.
“Paul has been alive longer since John died than before John died, if you think about it,” says Martin, who sees truth in Harrison’s observation that “The Beatles live in a different universe, regardless whether we’re around or not. It’s no longer us, it’s whatever anyone takes from it.”
“No human can sustain the power of The Beatles,” Martin says. “It’s a bit like serving The Avengers.”
Contributing: Melissa Ruggieri
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.usatoday.com ’
