Albums
To accompany the Anthology series, three albums were issued, each containing two CDs, two cassette tapes or three vinyl LPs of mostly never-before-released Beatles material (the exceptions being the Tony Sheridan-era material), although many of the tracks had appeared on bootlegs for many years prior.
Two days after the first television special in the series had aired, Anthology 1 was released to stores, and included music recorded by the Quarrymen, the famous Decca Records audition tapes, and various out-takes and demos from Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night and Beatles for Sale. It also included the song "Lend Me Your Comb", omitted from the collection Live at the BBC, released the previous year (1994). The song "Free as a Bird" was included at the very start. Some 450,000 copies of Anthology 1 were sold in its first day of release, the most sales for an album in a single day ever. The band's first drummer Pete Best, replaced by Ringo Starr in 1962 before the Beatles recorded professionally for EMI, received his first substantial Beatles royalties from this album, for the inclusion of early demo tracks on which he played.
Anthology 2 was released on 17 March 1996. The second collection presented out-takes and demos from the Beatles' sessions for Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour. These included selected early demos and takes for Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever", previously available only to bootleg collectors. The new song "Real Love" – which, like "Free as a Bird", was based on an unfinished Lennon recording – was also included in the two-CD collection.
Anthology 3 was released on 28 October 1996. The third collection featured out-takes and demos from The Beatles ("White Album"), Let It Be and Abbey Road, as well as several songs from Harrison and McCartney which later became post-Beatle tracks.
Mark Lewisohn wrote the liner notes that appear in the booklets accompanying all three audio sets. These notes, including the date and location of each session or appearance, were based on his own extensive research.
Anthology 4 was released on 21 November 2025. It primarily consists of outtakes and rarities that were previously released on box sets.
Collage
When laid side-by-side, the album covers of the first three compilations become a single collage of various peeling posters and album covers representing the different stages of the Beatles' career. The artwork was created by Alfons Kiefer and Klaus Voormann, who also created the album cover for Revolver in 1966. The Anthology covers required Voormann to recreate elements of his cover for Revolver within the collage. During the music video for "Free as a Bird", the Anthology collage appears as posters on a shop window as the camera pans quickly across the street. The design also adorned the VHS, laserdisc, and DVD releases, which also allowed the complete image to be shown by placing the cases side-by-side. Upon the release of Anthology 3, HMV stores released a limited edition cardboard sleeve designed to hold all three CD volumes, with each side of the sleeve making up half of the collage.
Digital release and Anthology Highlights
All three albums were made digitally available on the iTunes Store on 14 June 2011, alongside a new Anthology Highlights album which featured a selection of tracks from all three albums and reached number 184 on Billboard ' s United States Top Current Albums chart.[5]
