The Beatles - The Journey (DVD / CD)

Interviews include George Martin - Beatles record producer; Tony Calder - former PR agent; Rod Othen, a school friend of George Harrison; Ravi Shankar; George Harrison; and Paul McCartney and Tony Blair on the death of George Harrison.

The vintage video and newsreel footage may be considered fair to good to quite nice. For those of us who have collected Beatles video over the years, the quality may definitely be an upgrade from what we've obtained from other video collectors. I've been collecting Beatles video for more than 20 years and there's actually a few clips on this DVD that I haven't seen before!

Footage includes clips from the Beatles photo shoot in Central Park in February 1964; clips of Beatles memorabilia and fans, airport arrivals, substitute drummer Jimmy Nichol; on tour in Europe, Australia, Japan and the United States; receiving the MBE's at Buckingham Palace; death of Brian Epstein; the Beatles in Rishikesh; John Lennon's "we're more popular than Jesus" comment; banning of Beatles records; John and Yoko's campaign for peace; death of John Lennon; Barbara Walters' interview with Mark David Chapman; attack on George Harrison; fans remember George Harrison; Paul McCartney on the death of George Harrison; and George Martin on the death of George Harrison.

The DVD does not include any original music by The Beatles, but the soundtrack may be considered "Beatlesque" and an appropriate background for the footage. Music is performed by "The Overtures" - they actually sound quite a bit like "The Wonders" in the film "That Thing You Do."

The second disc in this set is an audio CD of several John Lennon interviews during the 1960s. Again, this is great archive material for the serious student of Beatles history.

For those who don't collect anything and everything, The Beatles First U.S. Visit may be a better choice, but if you want it all, go ahead and add this to your Beatles DVD collection.

All this DVD has is a collection of the same clips and interviews taken from this company's other DVD releases "Lennon The Messenger", "Harrison The Quiet One", and "Beatles Big Beat Box". So, some of the good Harrison stuff is on here, but not all of it by any means. This is just kind of like a sampler disc of the other three DVDs. Same horrible quality on the Beatles clips and Messenger samples as before. A cheap, underhanded attempt to keep re-packaging and re-name the same sludge over and over. Of course there is plenty of time and space that this could have included all the content from all three of those other titles, but no, this is still just an hour like the others. In many ways that is still an hour too long. Same old stuff on the audio CD too.

I can't believe the cost either! All of these DVDs should be bargain basement priced for what you get. I wish there had been a review before I bought this, because I wouldn't have. Now you know, avoid anything this studio puts out.