ANTHOLOGY 1

The first of the 3 Beatles Anthology sets, this is mainly notable for the first "new" Beatles song since Abbey Road. "Free As A Bird" was famously reconstructed from Lennon's original demo tape and, despite the poor quality of his vocal track, a very good job has been done to make this into an excellent song. Jeff Lynne couldn't resist giving Ringo his usual ELO snare drum sound, but he has to be congratulated on the overall outcome. This song is best seen in conjunction with the video, which will provide you with hours of fun playing "Spot the Beatles reference".Harrison contributes some excellent slide guitar and the banjo fade out is a spine tingling moment.

The other notable songs are from the first Quarrymen demo (including their first original "In Spite Of All The Danger"), the faintly embarrassing original Decca demos, the Morecambe and Wise special ("Hello Bongo!") and the brilliant unreleased rock'n'roll cover "Leave My Kitten Alone".There's also some early attempts at "One After 909" which eventually surfaced years later on "Let It Be".

In terms of historical significance, this could only be surpassed by the release of some undiscovered early Elvis demos, but most of it doesn't really bear up to repeated listening, hence I can only give it 2 stars.