The Anthology

I've killed almost as many weekends doing nothing as I've lived through in the last 21 years. However, last weekend might have hit a high point as I spent the better part of two days watching an 8-part series, broken up into 68 videos on YouTube, chronicling the rise, stagnation and fall of the most influence band in 20th century music. I watched The Beatles Anthology.

The biggest difference between this documentary and most every other documentary ever mabe by our ever-documenting society is the courage to reduce some ten years of musical stardom into only 9-plus hours. While a contradiction, I feel this is what was necessary to truly go behind the first layer of the Beatles mania that can only be known second-hand for Generations X, Y and Z.

Are the 8 separate parts padded with concert footage and pre-MTV music videos? Yes. Of course I'm curious to see footage of the nearly incomprehensible Magical Mystery Tour movie and Yellow Submarine; but do I need to see the Beatles perform "She Loves You" three or four times? Not really. But it's there and begs the question why. The only answer I can fathom is actually one I like quite a bit. The band probably got sick of the songs. For every time I've heard their most obvious (early) hits, they probably played the song a hundred times more.

This goes further as the documentary parts 2 through 6 seek to be nothing but tour footage. Go figure, these guys did nothing but tour for the better part of four years. By investing this much time with the band you truly begin to understand the monotony and surreal aspects of a life surrounded by psycho-fans who wanted a piece of your hair as more than they wanted to listen to your music, which was quite a bit.

But through the extend and cross-decade interviews, the different Beatles personalities take hold in a way any book can only hope to achieve--all Beatles books invariably falling in their ill-conceived jump at cliches and assumptions. You simply can not trust a source that says Paul McCartney was best at handling the adoring, and even rampaging, fans--you have to listen to McCartney talk about the fans and gage his words verse the other three to make a(n inevitably) similar, though deeper understanding.

Likewise, John Lennon maintains a frustrating distance between himself and his political supporters/detractors. Largely thanks to being dead since 1980, all most all of Lennon's interview segments are taken from a time shortly after the Beatles breakout and thus did not give him the distance of the reflection the other band members, fans and cultural historians enjoy. How can one talk about Vietnam in a historical context when history was just last week? Fortunately for Lennon, his cryptic answers and lyrics blend perfectly in line with his esoteric personality. While a tragedy, he was clearly the most appropriate Beatle to not live out the 1980s, and will forever be a youth while his band mates, and the world, age.

Did the Beatles inspire a generation or were they inspired by the generation around them? Well, I regrettably have the take the coward's way out and say both. Following the Anthology, the Beatles were clearly inspired by the events and people around them, but just as clearly brought new thoughts to the world around them. What this means is that they gave a cultural microphone to ideological minorities who would have been crushed like the swing-music resurgence in the early 1990s. Would have the hippie movement in the late sixties existed without the Beatles? Yes. Would hippies have the direct, and almost inter-changable, connotation with the 1960s they have now without the Beatles? Hell no.

As for the last parts of the series, I felt it was lacking. I usually don't push for more drama for drama's sake (especially in Entourage), but I did expect a little more explanation and elaboration on the dynamics that dissolved the group that unanimously conquered the world in a way no band, or army, had before. I wanted to know more about their home lives and relationships because you can't tell me that Yoko Ono was the only girl affecting all four Beatles in their 7-plus year global romp.

I also wanted to know more about the guys' finances. For the first four parts, the musicians' relative lack of funds reduces them to the level of circus freaks who put nails in their noses. What I mean is that everybody always expected these guys to be swimming in pools of Chardonnay and drying themselves with robes bought from the king of Saudi Arabia. Not that they were ever poor, but they weren't "Cribs" rich, either. Years later, through the benefit of looking like a cartoon character, Danielle Radcliffe has easily surpassed them all monetarily, thus proving, if nothing else, a tax accountant can save you millions if you're playing the game right.

After going on this weekend journey with the boys from Liverpool, I'm convinced the greatest miracle is how they all turned out. I don't know if any group of entertainers has been pushed so hard and for so long to remain the best at what they do. These guys were releasing classic albums every six months when audiences nowadays are almost crazy to expect anything from their favorite band every two years. It really just a testament to high standards and lightning adaptation. When the world moves so fast, the band members--most notably Lennon and George Harrison--, had to always be running to what's next.

We live in a world some forty years older and when trans-Atlantic flights are almost met with a yawn. The boom of a pop junk culture and instant-meal entertainment has done little to push musicians any quicker. I defy anybody to name a band that has evolved through as many stages as the Beatles in as quick of a time period. And even then, no band has achieved the global and iconic popularity the Beatles had for as long as they wanted. Even their biggest critics (mostly in America's Deep South) burned record-sized bonfires.

Through their music, jokes and snowball popularity, the Beatles have achieved a near-mythical status for the generations that could never have seen them live, on par with perhaps King Arthur or Odysseus. The study of history has no formula for everything. Things always get left out, so I can't say The Beatles Anthology is a substitution for any other study of the 1960s, but I can say this: it is important, it is well made, it spurs discussion and it is one of the better ways I've found to bridge Saturday morning to Sunday night.