BEATLES FOR SALE, YET AGAIN? (2025): The way things are going, they're going to crucify me.

That's it. It ends here.

I think my passion, fascination and perhaps even obsession with the Beatles is over. It's a sad farewell and feels a bit tainted.

Let me just say that I'm a fan, have been since I was about 12 when I first heard Please Please Me.

I'd missed Love Me Do (and frankly never much rated it) but suddenly there they were: on the radio, in photos from Jackie and Rave magazine on my bedroom wall. I was growing up to the Beatles.

I bought the singles and as they came out, got every album.

And I just never stopped: the first CD release of the albums, the mono and stereo box sets of the albums (on vinyl and CD), obscurities, live bootlegs (including some awful ones), the Anthology (I went to the launch in London), the Anthology book and DVD set, the expanded Let It Be, White Album, Sgt Pepper, Abbey Road, Revolver, the expanded Red and Blue compilations . . .

I even bought the Christmas messages and over the years picked up the original US versions of their releases on vinyl (and yes, I have the box set of them on CD).

I've not been uncritical and for my own amusement invented Beatle albums and box sets (which some people took seriously, despite the obvious clues) 

But when it comes to Beatle music, you name it, I've probably got it . . . and dozens of weird things, books, articles, DVDs, videos . . .

I even taught a university course on how the Beatles and Bob Dylan changed the musical, social and cultural landscape in the Sixties.

But all that is behind me now because I have just learned that Apple are releasing an expanded edition of the three CD Anthology with an extra disc.

Volume 4 contains 14 tracks, different takes of songs like This Boy (a firm favourite), Every Little Thing, I Need You, Nowhere Man, Love You To and Strawberry Fields Forever (take 26).

Fans are already getting into heated debates online about the quality of these takes, what is happening with the first three volumes in the reissue (different mixes from those on the 1995 release?), how does the new sound of Free As a Bird compare with the previous one . . .

There's a cry for an expanded version of Peter Jackson's Get Back doco series with the music all remastered and remixed . . .

People want more?

But we've been down this path before with the Singles Collection and this just looks like another cash-grab to get obsessives like me.

But this time I'm not falling for it (nor the nine CD, three Blu-Ray edition of Lennon in New York coming out soon).

I know all these songs and have heard other takes of most and don't need to hear even more.

It's shame and, as I said, the music and the memory is being tainted by this seemingly endless issuing of lesser versions of often brilliant songs.

Oh yes, I know there will be some revelation gleaned from some of them.

But I'll sit it out and maybe every now and then check online to see who has waded through them all on our behalf to tell us of a couple of things worth hearing.

Then I'll go to Spotify to listen . . . because frankly Apple and the Beatles have had enough money from me.