A compilation album of unreleased materials by The Beatles faced strong objections from the surviving band members.
Paul McCartney suggested the project should not be released while George Harrison and John Lennon‘s estate called on the compilation to be scrapped entirely. Sessions, the proposed 1985 compilation album, was ultimately cancelled after the Fab Four intervened, though all was not lost and the project would be revived a decade later. Sessions served as the foundation for the Anthology project from The Beatles, a career-spanning look back at the band’s achievements and work together. Sessions had been the original plan for the group, though it was ultimately scrapped. The album would have featured thirteen at-the-time unreleased songs by The Beatles, including Leave My Kitten Alone and an alternative version of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. But life goes on, and the band would object to releasing the work entirely.
Compilations had been released in the past, including The Beatles Ballads and Love Songs, as well as a live album of their performance at the Hollywood Bowl. But it seemed a step too far to have the group’s archival tapes and unreleased materials picked through. Fans seem glad the Sessions project was scrapped, especially since it led to a much more rewarding piece of work.
A post to the r/Beatles subreddit saw fans share their thoughts on the cancelled album. One person wrote: “It later turned into the Anthology project, with most of the stuff set for release on that album ending up on the Anthology 1-3 albums.”
Another added: “And those tracks were edited, and didn’t always sound so good, so why the hell did they use those Sessions mixes for the Anthology series? Particularly That Means A Lot sounds absolutely horrible, with some sort of warbling distortion in the left speaker, and the whole thing slathered with Dave Dexter Jr style echo.
“I was so excited to hear a clean mix of it when Anthology 2 came out, only to find they used that horrible Sessions mix. Does anyone know why? Or how such a trash mix was approved in the first place?”
A third shared: “I got my hands on a bootleg copy years before Anthology, and it was just insanely cool to hear ‘new’ Beatles material – I had never heard of Sessions back then, before the Internet amounted to much.
“I wasn’t part of any bootleg trading community, and the cool used record store was a good 25 miles away from the burbs to the city, but we went as much as we could.”
Others recalled the initial release process of the album, and how quickly Sessions was bootlegged once the project was cancelled. A listener wrote: “There was so much hype around this LP at the time, and many FM radio stations in the NYC metro area started playing Leave My Kitten Alone.
“Once the word got around that the project was cancelled, the bootlegs started showing up all over the place. I bought mine at Beatlefest.” Another added: “I had it on a cassette in the late 80s, many years before Anthology. While I’m happy we got six discs of Anthology, it actually had all of the complete, finished songs that have never been released.”
