If you love the Beatles, you definitely want to hear this new “Baby I’m a Rich Man,” from the superb new collection Anthology 4. It’s a six-minute take from May 1967, unheard until now, with the lads hard at work in Abbey Road. John calls out to their loyal roadie Mal Evans, “We’d like some Cokes, Mal.” Paul adds, “And if you’ve got some cannabis resin!” That sounds good to John. “Yeah,” he says. “If you’ve got cannabis, send it in!”
They know the tapes are rolling, but they don’t care. They’re on top of the world and they know it. Paul quips, “We’ve got that taped for the High Court tomorrow.” (This recording session happens to be the day after Mick Jagger and Keith Richards got dragged into court for their recent drug bust. Cheeky lads, these.) John declares, “All right, let’s hear some rhythm and soul from London now!” Then they rip into “Baby I’m a Rich Man” — not even one of their most famous 1967 songs, just another day of genius for this crew, thriving on a four-way energy nobody else can reach. It’s such a jolt to hear it — how passionately these boys love being the Beatles.
Anthology 4 is a real treasure trove for fans. It’s the companion album to the long-awaited new edition of the ultimate Beatles documentary. The original Anthology blew up into a global sensation when it debuted in November 1995, a TV miniseries plus three albums and a book. It’s the full Fab Four story, in the words of the boys who lived it out: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Anthology is finally getting its new version, restored and expanded, debuting on Disney+ on November 26. It’s got an emotionally powerful new Episode Nine, focusing on footage of the three surviving Beatles coming together in 1994 and 1995.
The Anthology albums were packed with unreleased tunes, outtakes, demos, and studio banter. Giles Martin, son and heir to original producer George Martin, has remastered the Nineties volumes, but he’s also curated the new Anthology 4. The Anthology Collection has 191 tracks in all, available for download and streaming, as well as deluxe box sets with 12 vinyl LPs or 8 CDs. Anthology 4 is separately available as a stand-alone box, either triple-vinyl or 2 CDs.
When the original Anthology albums dropped, everybody figured this was the final word on the Beatles — but it turned out the vaults were full of archival treasures that would take decades to emerge. Two of the Anthology 4 songs, “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Money (That’s What I Want),” came out on The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963, an oddity released for just a few hours in 2013 to extend the European copyright.
Most of these tracks come from the Special Editions that have been redefining the Beatles legacy ever since 2017, when the Sgt. Pepper box blew minds, packed with more goodies than even the most hardcore Fabological obsessives could have imagined. There’s outtakes of “Got To Get You Into My Life” from the Revolver box, “Here Comes the Sun” from Abbey Road, “Don’t Let Me Down” from the Apple rooftop. The topper is “Good Night,” from the 2018 White Album edition, with all four Beatles harmonizing — a stunning performance that somehow sat in the vaults for 50 years.
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But the heart of Anthology 4 is the previously unheard material. There’s a revelatory first take of “In My Life,” with John thinking the song out loud, screwing up his courage, with Paul’s harmony and Ringo’s drums providing the brotherly support he needs. He never sounded more naked. “I’ve Just Seen A Face” is all madcap comic energy, with John joking about Fifties skiffle pioneer Lonnie Donegan, saying, “Lonnie’s gonna be sorry he didn’t sing this one.” They break up laughing, as they keep doing all over Anthology 4, and it’s a contagious sound — if you savor the sound of these lads laughing at themselves, this album has their highest mirth-per-minute ratio.
There’s an amazing early take of “This Boy,” known only to proud owners of the 1995 “Free As a Bird” CD single, which means practically nobody. As it begins, John sneers, “Get that bloody mic out of the way.” But it’s breathtaking to hear him leap into the bridge and wail “Oh myyyyy” — there’s no holding back, only the most intense emotional urgency. John kept putting down “This Boy” for the rest of his life, dismissing as an early throwaway — but he was probably just threatened by how vulnerable he let himself sound.
“Every Little Thing” is a loose studio romp, which falls apart when Paul confesses, “I burped.” There’s also a BBC rehearsal of “All You Need Is Love” with comic narration (“Queen Margaret in a low-feathered nightgown”). Ringo belts a fantastic “Matchbox,” sounding live and raw, without the bizarrely overdone reverb from the botched official version, busting out his “all right George” for the guitar solo.
One of the best moments is the terminally underrated “I Need You,” a George Harrison tune from Help! It’s faster and friskier than the final version, bristling with Buddy Holly energy, but you can hear how nervous he is. In the final minute, the rest of the band is snickering at him, yet the Quiet One perseveres and never breaks. (In the final credits of the Help! movie, he keeps repeating his songwriting credit out loud: “‘I Need You’ by George Harrison!” It wasn’t easy being George.) It isn’t hard to hear the link between this “I Need You” and the solemn focus he brought to “Isn’t It A Pity” or “Behind that Locked Door,” five chaotic years later.
But the emotional highlight here is “If I Fell.” John guides himself into the song, as if he’s not sure how earnest he dares to get, while Ringo clicks loudly behind him. This session is February 1964, right when the Beatlemania explosion is going global — just a couple weeks after their American conquest on The Ed Sullivan Show. But they’re already determined to leave it behind, pushing on with this weirdly constructed ballad, with more chord changes than they’d ever crammed into one tune. The kidding and laughing is all gone as soon as the song begins — John is laser-focused on telling his story, his voice deadly serious, lifted by those hair-raising Paul harmonies. “If I Fell” is a song you’ve heard a million times, but hearing this version makes you marvel that it ever happened.
The Anthology project inspired the three surviving Beatles, Paul, George, and Ringo, to reunite in the studio and rescue some unfinished John songs, from home cassette demos provided by Yoko Ono. “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” both Nineties singles, are here, newly remixed by producer Jeff Lynne. Anthology 4 ends fittingly with “Now and Then,” a John demo the lads tried at the 1994 sessions, but left unfinished. In the new Episode Nine, Paul muses, “It might not go away, that one.” He was right — decades later, he returned to his old friend’s song, until it became the final Beatles single in 2023.
George Harrison tells a great story in the new episode about the Beatles working late nights at Abbey Road. “Some of the people here — the engineer, for instance — would always be trying to go home at 5:30,” he says in mock horror. “And we’d all be trying to make history.” So Mal Evans brewed a special pot of tea for the studio crew. “We doused the tea with uppers,” George recalls. “‘Can we go home now?’ No, you can’t, bastard — have a cup of tea.” Ringo adds, “George [Martin] hasn’t come down yet.”
The entire Anthology Collection bristles with that kind of nonstop restless creative spirit — the raw Hamburg punk rock of Volume One, the trippy studio experiments of Volume Two, the mature world-weary grit of Volume Three. There’s a comic moment in the new Episode Nine where George and Ringo mock Paul for being the taskmaster in the band, always hustling the others into the studio. As Ringo quips, “We could sit in the garden longer than you.” Paul has to plead guilty. “I was the work fiend,” he admits. “I like the Beatles. I like to work with the Beatles. I’m not ashamed of that. It’s what I love in life, all that making music.” You can hear that love loud and clear with all four boys on Anthology.
From Rolling Stone US
