'Anthology 3' documents the last two increasingly acrimonious years of the Beatles, during which all of them quit at one time or another - Ringo during the 'White Album' sessions, George while they were recording and filming 'Let It Be', both to return after a few days, John at the end of 1969 secretly but permanently, and finally Paul in a blaze of publicity in April 1970.

The first few tracks date back to the era when they launched Apple Records, ironically as they were splintering into different units, increasingly solo artists appearing as session musicians on each others' songs. Or to look at it another way, they were already peering over the horizon at the post-Beatle world. This time there are no reconstructed and heavily overdubbed demos from which to create 'new' singles, but plenty of demos and alternate takes from the white album, ‘Abbey Road’, and ‘Let It Be’ (with John spoiling the seriousness of a run-through of the title track by cheerfully calling Paul a bounder and a cheat) as well as early versions of ‘All Things Must Pass’ and ‘Not Guilty’, which George wrote and later recorded properly on two of his solo albums in the 70s; and Paul's versions of ‘Step Inside Love’ and ‘Come And Get It’, hits respectively for Cilla Black and Badfinger.

The others include a rock'n'roll medley included during the difficult ‘Let It Be’ sessions, run-throughs of 'Ain't She Sweet' and 'Mailman Bring Me No More Blues', and probably best of all an amusing version of ‘Get Back’, with Paul ad-libbing vocals at the end just as the police were coming to order them off the office roof during that famous last live open-air performance in January 1969.

The main exclusive is John Lennon's ‘What's The New Mary Jane’, a much-hyped 'rarity' which had been rumoured
as a possible Plastic Ono Band single at the time, featuring John, George, Yoko and roadie Mal Evans (the two latter contributing sound effects), but neither Paul nor Ringo. It's not so much a song, more a 6-minute piece of eccentricity or wilful self-indulgence, depending on your mood.

Like its predecessors, it's a good insight into what made the Fab Four tick, but because of the lack of previously unreleased songs (not counting those they didn't write themselves, the songs listed above that they gave to other artists and 'Mary Jane'), it's probably less of a must-have than the previous two Anthology sets. However, if you're a Beatles fan who has everything else, you're not going to let a little thing like that stop you from completing your set, eh?