Anthology 3 (1997)
Disc One
1.A Beginning
2.Happiness is a Warm Gun
3.Helter Skelter
4.Mean Mr. Mustard (Take)
5.Polythene Pam
6.Glass Onion
7.Junk (Take)
8.Piggies
9.Honey Pie
10.Don't Pass Me By
11.Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da
12.Goodnight (Version)
13.Cry Baby Cry (Version)
14.Blackbird
15.Sexy Sadie
16.While My Guitar Gently Weeps
17.Hey Jude
18.Not Guilty
19.Mother Nature's Son (Take)
20.Glass Onion (Version)
21.Rocky Raccoon (Take)
22.What's the New Mary Jane?
23.Step Inside Love
24.I'm So Tired
25.I Will
26.Why Don't We Do it in the Road? (Version)
27.Julia (Take)
Disc Two
1.I've Got A Feeling
2.She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
3.Dig a Pony (Version)
4.Two of Us (Take)
5.For You Blue
6.Teddy Boy
7.Medley: Rip It Up/Shake Rattle and Roll/Blue Suede Shoes
8.The Long and Winding Road
9.Oh! Darling (Take)
10.All Things Must Pass
11.Mailman Bring me No More Blues
12.Get Back
13.Old Brown Shoe
14.Octopus's Garden
15.Maxwell's Silver Hammer (Take)
16.Something
17.Come Together (Version)
18.Come and Get It
19.Ain't She Sweet
20.Because (Version)
21.Let it Be
22.I Me Mine
23.The End
If Anthology 1 was the sound of young men discovering their power, and Anthology 2 a document of their psychedelic reinvention, then Anthology 3 is the sound of a band coming apart—with poise, precision, and moments of breathtaking clarity. Covering the period from the White Album through to Let It Be, this final chapter captures The Beatles in retreat from unity, yet paradoxically at their most individually focused and musically refined.
Gone are the novelty interviews and live television fragments that peppered the earlier volumes. What remains is music—raw, intimate, often stripped of its ornate studio dressing. The compilation opens not with a fanfare, but with an instrumental excerpt of Good Night, its original vocal removed. It’s a subtle, melancholy curtain-raiser, made more poignant by the absence of the “third” new Lennon track that was rumored but never surfaced. One senses that even the producers realized the curtain had already fallen.
What follows is a series of Kinfauns demos recorded at George Harrison’s home in Esher—a remarkable window into the band’s evolving songwriting and independence. Junk, later issued with minimal alteration on McCartney’s first solo LP, is already delicate and complete. Teddy Boy rambles agreeably. And Harrison’s All Things Must Pass—a song that could have rescued Let It Be from its existential torpor—is here, quiet and unfinished, but already profound. The inclusion of Not Guilty, shelved until Harrison’s 1979 solo album, adds weight to the argument that his compositional backlog was criminally underrepresented in the band’s final years.
Many tracks presented here are alternate takes—some nearly indistinguishable from the released versions, others revelatory. The acoustic While My Guitar Gently Weeps is a standout: raw, unadorned, and emotionally unfiltered. It may well be the most affecting track in the entire Anthology set. Hey Jude, on the other hand, is a curious inclusion. Devoid of its famous extended coda, it feels not incomplete but unfulfilled.
Disc two veers between the fascinating and the familiar. What’s the New Mary Jane, a piece of surrealist anti-song long circulated on bootlegs, finally receives an official debut. It’s nonsensical, haunting, and oddly catchy—an artefact from the Revolution 9 fringe, rescued from obscurity. Because, reimagined as an a cappella tapestry, is a masterclass in harmonic restraint and serves as a gentle inversion of Eleanor Rigby’s string-only drama from Anthology 2.
By the time we reach the set’s closing track, The End, the mood is unmistakable. These aren’t just alternative versions—they’re echoes. The band was fractured, their chemistry still sparking but increasingly siloed. The absence of any new material from the surviving members here speaks volumes. There was, perhaps, nothing left to say.
Yet Anthology 3 remains essential—not for what it reveals about the Beatles’ collapse, but for the enduring brilliance that persisted even in the shadow of dissolution. These recordings, some half-finished, some casually tossed aside, still surpass the peak work of most bands.
In retrospect, the Anthology project was less about unearthing new songs than about telling a more complete story—one of process, transition, and astonishing consistency. That so much beauty survived such turbulent circumstances is a testament not only to the individual talents involved but to the magic that still lingered, right until the very end.