The first “new” Beatles song since 1995 is now available on streaming services (with Atmos mix support).
The Beatles first tried to make something out of Lennon's “Now and Then” demo in the mid-'90s, when Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr reunited to work on “new” songs that would appear on the band's Anthology albums. They successfully completed “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”, setting their own arrangement to John's music.
But work on “Now and Then” fell through, largely due to technical problems that made the original tune difficult to work with.
“In John’s demo, the piano was hard to hear. And in those days, of course, we did not have the necessary technology. Every time we tried to get more of the voice out, the piano would come through and cloud the picture,” McCartney said in a new documentary about the song.
In the end, the record was simply shelved. Harrison died in 2001, and plans for the song's future became uncertain.
“It took us almost a quarter of a century to wait for the right moment to pick up Now and Then again,” McCartney said.
The turning point came early this decade when director Peter Jackson was working on his Disney Plus documentary Get Back. His team developed technology that made it possible to take almost any piece of music (even an ancient demo) and “separate it into its different components using machine learning.” McCartney and Starr realized this was their opportunity to take Now and Then to the finale.
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“Now we can mix it and record it properly,” McCartney said.
Paul recorded bass music, Starr added drums, and producer Giles Martin came up with a string arrangement “just like his dad would have done in the old days” (Giles is the son of Beatles producer George Martin, who was sometimes called the “fifth Beatle”).
Music video
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A short film about the creation of the track
It's unclear how much of Harrison's work will be on the track (it's said he wasn't a big fan of Lennon's unfinished song), but McCartney says he saved his parts from the Anthology sessions and played a George-style guitar solo.
“My dad would have loved it because he was never shy about experimenting with recording technology. I think it's really beautiful,” Sean Ono Lennon said.
McCartney echoed this thought:
“Still working on Beatles music in 2023… it's wow. We're actually tinkering with cutting-edge technology, which is something the band would be very interested in. This is probably like our last song. And we all played there, so it's a real record.”