“The end has finally arrived,” The Beatles’ company Apple Corps announced with a dramatic flourish in 1996. The occasion was the release of Anthology 3, the last in a trilogy of archival compilation albums. They were part of a multipronged retrospective encompassing a book, television documentary series and two new singles, “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”, which had been contrived by the surviving Beatles from unreleased demos by John Lennon.
The press release was adamant: the band’s reactivation would be their last bow, the final curtain. “The Beatles are no more,” it stated. “The official word is that Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr will never play together again as a group, and they have decided that there will be no more singles issued from their back catalogue.”