Geoff Wonfor, the director of ‘The Beatles Anthology’, dies aged 73
The award-winning director of The Beatles Anthology series, Geoff Wonfor, has died aged 73.
The news of his death was confirmed on Tuesday, November 22nd, by his daughter Sam, who explained that Wonfor passed away in his native city of Newcastle. The cause of death is yet to be revealed.
“We are devastated to have lost our Dad and Gramps and are finding it impossible to imagine a world without him in it,” she said in a statement [per the BBC] “He was a one-off – a huge presence with a heart to match.”
“His warmth, humour and encyclopaedic capacity for remembering jokes of all qualities ensured people who met him rarely forgot him – and that has been borne out by the wave of wonderful messages and tributes we’ve received since his passing,” she continued. “He loved what he did and we’re so very grateful he got to continue doing it to the end.”
Notably, Wonfor spent nearly five years creating The Beatles Anthology, a multimedia project of an eight-part documentary, three double albums and an in-depth coffee table book.
The series stitched together archive footage of the band as well as new interviews with the surviving members, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The project also caught the eye because it included commentary from frontman John Lennon, who was murdered in New York in 1980. the series was such a triumph that it won the Grammy for Best Long Form Music Video.
Elsewhere, Wonfor directed the music for a pair of Paul McCartney solo tracks ‘In The World Tonight’ and ‘Young Boy’ and had already worked on the iconic 1980s music show, The Tube. He also helmed Band Aid 20, a documentary about 1984’s Christmas hit, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’.
Geoff Wonfor is survived by his daughters, Abi and Sam.
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