The Beatles Anthology Project and Now And Then | The Full Story

Even before the Beatles broke up in 1970, there was considerable interest in telling their story. Hunter Davies published in 1968 the first authorized biography of the band, written with the full cooperation of the Beatles but with a series of restrictions: he was forbidden to talk about drugs, Brian Epstein's homosexuality or the Beatles' stories with groupies during their touring years. Once the group was split up, a great number of formats such as magazines, books, documentaries, fiction films and even musicals tried to tell the band's story, but in search of an official version since 1970 Neil Aspinall, a personal friend of the band and director of apple corps, formalized his attempt to launch a documentary of the beatles. For years he had collected concert footage, interviews and television appearances of the beatles from around the world, and with a gigantic archive behind him he began work on "The Long and Winding Road".