Off The Beatle Track

I’m a second-gen Beatles’ fan; I was born in 1964, and although I’d surely heard their music all my life, I didn’t become interested in the band until about 1976.*

During the post-breakup years, several events–most, but not all, releases or rereleases of their music, and some not even initiated by the band or their representatives–have kept The Beatles in the public consciousness, sometimes even at the forefront. I’ve collected a few notable examples here. I don’t intend to make this an exhaustive list, but merely to demonstrate that something seems to have happened every few years since 1970 that resulted in the public’s continuing to think about, talk about, and listen to The Beatles.

1973: The release of the “Red” and “Blue” Albums (The Beatles 1962-1966 and The Beatles 1967-1970). These two double-disc collections (a mixture of greatest hits, non-single classic album tracks like Michelle and While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and worthy head-scratchers like Girl and Old Brown Shoe) signified that one greatest hits disc couldn’t contain The Beatles. Thenceforward, one could own only these two Beatles’ albums and have a decent perspective on the arc of their recording career.

1976: Reunion rumors. Of course, rumors that The Beatles would reunite started almost as soon as the news of the breakup circulated.** I’ve chosen 1976 because that was the year that The Beatles turned down millions of dollars to perform one show and Saturday Night Live‘s Lorne Michaels offered them $3,000.

1980: John’s murder. I turned 16 in 1980, and I didn’t know many Beatles’ fans my age. But when John was murdered on December 8, Beatles’ music played on every radio station. The senselessness and tragedy of John’s death aside (and that’s a big aside–a Beatle, a husband and father of a five-year-old son, at one time maybe the famous man in the world, was murdered in this country, and the U.S. still didn’t enact meaningful gun reform), hearing Beatles’ music again, even under the circumstances, reminded all of us of how great a band they were. Based solely on my own experience, I believe that John’s untimely death, sadly, did more to cement The Beatles’ reputation than any other post-breakup event. With the possibility of a true reunion eliminated, music fans seemed to gain a different perspective on what The Beatles accomplished during their recording years (basically mid-1962 to mid-1969). To paraphrase the great Neil Innes: They arrived, they conquered, and to prove it they’re still here.

1987-1988: The Beatles’ catalog released on CD. I’m no audiophile, so I can’t comment intelligently on the sonic quality of the band’s first compact disc releases. But that misses the point anyway: The real value of the ’87-’88 CDs was that the catalog was standardized around the world for the first time. Here in the U.S., Capitol cannibalized every album before Sgt. Pepper to generate two or three other releases with titles like Something New, The Early Beatles, and the egregiously packaged Yesterday and Today.*** Not coincidentally, I believe, public and critical acclaim shifted thereafter from hailing Sgt. Pepper as the greatest rock album of all time to the version of Revolver as The Beatles intended it.

1995-2003: Anthology. The Anthology TV series aired in 1995, and the Anthology 1 album was released at about the same time. Anthology 2 and 3 were released in 1996. The Anthology book was published in 2000. And the expanded Anthology DVD collection was released in 2003. I’m surprised at how many Beatles fans younger than I cite Anthology as the on-ramp for their fandom. But the TV series told The Beatles’ story, which is fascinating, and played a lot of Beatles’ music, which is irresistible.

Then, in the midst of the Anthology releases, The Beatles made possibly the smartest decision of the post-breakup years. Next time in Off The Beatle Track.

*And even then, I knew that The Beatles had a Paul, but I wondered whether it was Paul Simon.

**I once saw an Onion headline that said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Elvis Dead!,” with the subhead, “Is Elvis Alive?”

***Which contained tracks from the U.K. versions of Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, and a double-A-sided single.