It’s never an easy experience for artists to return to some of their older material. While it’s usually a good idea to listen to the final version to make sure that there aren’t any bum notes in the mix, it’s always better for artists to move forward and not have to worry about the hits that they made years ago. Although it couldn’t have hurt any of the former Beatles to take a look back on their older material, Paul McCartney had really had his fill by the time he finished this grand project.
Because, in many ways, the entire pantheon of pop rock is descended from what The Beatles had done. Even if people don’t care for some of their tunes, the biggest pieces of pop today are combing through the Fab Four’s back catalogue without even knowing it, whether that’s in how they conducted themselves in the public eye or the types of chords they used when sculpting a lot of their melodies.
In the years since their breakup, McCartney almost made it a priority to move away from his traditional sound. That was reserved for the past, and once he started working with Wings, he was adamant about building a new band from scratch and not having to worry about whether or not it lived up to the heights that he made with John Lennon.
When listening to what he made in the late 1980s, though, that sound seemed to have diminishing returns. Working with Elvis Costello may have been an inspiring idea at the time, but really, only half of an album like Flowers in the Dirt works, and when Off the Ground came out, it was clear that McCartney needed a new kind of reinvention.
And that kind of reinvention meant looking back for the first time with The Beatles Anthology. After getting the chance to collaborate with Lennon from beyond the grave on ‘Free As a Bird’, the three instalments of their history are a godsend for Beatles nerds everywhere, especially the alternate takes of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ or listening to the tapes from their infamous Decca audition, where they got rejected.
Since McCartney had lived through most of these days before, though, he had absolutely no desire to take a deep dive through every album, saying, “I didn’t take an awful lot of interest in them, actually. I still haven’t heard them. I know what’s on them because I’ve heard it all before, you know.”
For McCartney, these records would have practically been like looking through family photos, but if one’s legacy is as big as his, it’s going to be difficult to carve out time in a day to listen to them. I mean, if listening to all of the records is somehow longer than the extended cut of Return of the King, then it will probably sound a little bit bloated to the guy who actually made the whole thing.
However, The Beatles Anthology did at least give Macca some perspective when it came time to work on his next album, Flaming Pie, which tapped into some of that Fab spirit all over again. Still, the massive box set was more than an album to any of The Beatles. It was a chance to take a glimpse into that part of their career and be able to close the door on it one last time.
