Beatles : Music to live for! Who would think such masters could even exist . Audio CD (sorry, no mp3). Folk and Rock - Soaring to musical heaven. Beyond the Grammy and Platinum to the Soul.

The Beatles DVD Collector's Set ~ DVD ~ Bestseller - IF YOU DON"T HAVE THIS DVD, YOU'RE MISSIN OUT BIG TIME!

This four-disc set includes two feature films and two documentaries (all previously available on DVD). Help! (1965), in which a religious sect is in pursuit of a sacrificial ring stuck on Ringo's finger, is a broad spoof of the spy flicks of the time, with James Bond-like themes and locales. Songs include "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and "Ticket to Ride." Only two years later but strikingly different in mood and tone, Magical Mystery Tour (1967) is chiefly a series of psychedelic music videos, including "Fool on the Hill," "I Am the Walrus," and "Blue Jay Way," loosely organized around a plot of a bus trip through the English countryside.

The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit is an 83-minute black-and-white documentary by acclaimed directing brothers Albert and David Maysles that captures the group's trip to the U.S. in February 1964. It includes plenty of songs as performed on The Ed Sullivan Show, of course, as well as footage of the band riding the train or sitting in their hotel room watching television coverage of themselves. A subsequent performance in Washington, D.C., suffers from grainier footage and spotty microphones, but still captures the frenzy of the fans.

You Can't Do That!: The Making of "A Hard Day's Night" is an hourlong documentary that traces the creation of the historic 1964 film. Hosted by Phil Collins, who appeared in the original among a crowd of screaming teenagers, the film features extensive clips and interviews with those involved with the movie (though George Harrison is the only Beatle whose voice is heard). A highlight is "You Can't Do That," a performance that was cut from the original film. Obviously, a perfect DVD set would include A Hard Day's Night itself, but rights issues have kept it out of circulation. --David Horiuchi (Amazon)

The DVD of Help! includes a text description of the 1996 restoration, plus 2 minutes of newsreels and 4.5 minutes of promotional footage (including black-and-white footage from the film set and from the royal world premiere, and color and black-and-white stills from the set with Beatle voice-overs). The DVD of Magical Mystery Tour includes 3 minutes of black-and-white newsreels featuring the Baker Street psychedelic shop and Maharishi Mahash Yogi's meditation retreat. Each of the above DVDs includes trailers from the other three films included in the set, plus A Hard Day's Night. Help! also includes its own trailer, but curiously Magical Mystery Tour does not. The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit and You Can't Do That: The Making of "A Hard Day's Night" include trivia quizzes on, respectively, the Beatles' 1964 U.S. trip and A Hard Day's Night.

The Beatles Anthology collector's Set (1996) ~ VHS ~ Bestseller
"Beatles Initially broadcast as a TV miniseries to go with the series of three Anthology double-CD albums, this set of eight documentary tapes has the heft and scope of one of Ken Burns's expansive projects. Still, unless you are either a historian or a truly committed fan, you'll find yourself with way more material--particularly about the Beatles' early lives as lads in Liverpool--than you'll want to watch. The documentary material is copious, including early performance films and tapes, at the point before they found their true voices. The actual Beatlemania years--beginning in 1963 and concluding in 1970--feature extensive performance films, as well as home movies and archival material. The best parts, of course, are the interviews with the Beatles themselves, who produced the entire thing. Along with reworking two previously unreleased John Lennon tracks as "new Beatles songs," the Anthology includes some unseen Lennon interview tapes so that his acerbic voice can be heard as well. This stands as a comprehensive document of that heady period, the second coming of rock & roll, as the Beatles took what Elvis had started and expanded upon it exponentially. The tapes give a solid sense of the historical context and the way these four musicians changed the world around them in the 1960s". - Mr. Fine

A Hard Day's Night (1964) ~ DVD ~ Bestseller

Abbey Road to Zapple Records : A Beatles Encyclopedia by Judson Knight.

All Our Loving : A Beatles Fan's Memoir by Carolyn Lee Mitchell, Michael Munn

All We Are Saying : The Last Major Interview With John Lennon and Yoko Ono by John Lennon

The Beatles Anthology by The Beatles - The MAIN EVENT!

After all these years, is there anything new to say about the Beatles? Only if you go straight to the guys who haven't had their full say: the Beatles themselves and their closest confidants. The Beatles Anthology has kaleidoscope eyes--and perceptive ones at that.

The book is fascinating on several levels. First, it's delightful eye candy: there are zillions of casual photos you've never seen, including cool stuff like the original album cover for Revolver and portraits of the artists as impossibly young men. Second, despite its massive size, it's a breezy pleasure to read. The consistently clever and reflective quotes of the lads Mick Jagger dubbed "the Four-Headed Monster" prove that they have quite independent points of view. Only John, for instance, would have tried to convince the others to get their heads trepanned--drilled!--to release their "inner third eye." (Paul told John to try it first.)

The best thing about the book is that it puts you inside with the boys in the bubble as they blazed through the world like a comet. You are there as teenagers John and Paul sneak off for a "crafty fag [cigarette] in the cemetery," unconsciously absorbing the tombstone names of Father McKenzie and Eleanor Rigby. You hear the first lyrics to the tune that came to Paul in a dream: "Scrambled eggs, oh, my baby, how I love your legs." (Happily, it became "Yesterday.") You're there the day they jammed with Elvis, and the night Bob Dylan turned them on to marijuana. (Paul excitedly jotted down "the message of the universe," and in the morning found he'd scribbled, "THERE ARE SEVEN LEVELS.") You discover that only one of them took LSD in the studio--John, by mistake, thinking they were amphetamines. He nearly stepped off the Abbey Road rooftop to his death while marveling at the stars, cheating us out of "A Day in the Life."

This book captures much of the spontaneity that made the Beatles immortal. Though it also documents the many fights (when George added an answering guitar phrase to Paul's vocal on "Hey Jude," Paul nixed it and sowed trouble), it conveys what kept them together. As Ringo sagely says, "Elvis went downhill because he seemed to have no friends, just a load of sycophants. Whereas with us, individually we all went mad, but the other three always brought us back."