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Fans are rejoicing over the release of a new Beatles track, which the band says is their “final” number. Titled “Now and Then,” it’s a demo John Lennon first recorded, which Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr finished last year with some help from AI. The track came out Nov. 2 and is available on all major streaming sites.
“Now and Then” may be a work that was patched together like Frankenstein, but that doesn’t mean it is not a beautiful and moving song. That’s in part because Lennon had such skill at crafting universal lyrics, and his words here could stand as an epitaph for the Beatles’ entire career. Lennon’s voice itself is evocative of an era and generation, but so are the themes and sonic structure of the tune. The addition of the strings, and Harrison’s guitar, makes an already sad song so heart-rending. It’s one of the simplest Beatles’ songs, but forever it now also ranks as one of their most important.
“Now and Then” will be released also as double A-sided single with the Beatles’ 1962 debut “Love Me Do” on Nov. 10, along with a Beatles video by Peter Jackson, 62 (The Lord of the Rings, The Beatles: Get Back). The song will also be added to remastered album versions of the Beatles’ so-called “red” (1962-1966) and “blue” (1967-1970) greatest-hits albums and cementing the new number alongside their most loved songs.
An emotional final track from the beloved band
“Now and Then” was a demo that Lennon worked on in the late ’70s, recording a rough version on a cassette two years before his tragic murder in 1980. Yoko Ono, now 90, later presented the tape to Paul McCartney. With Ringo Starr and George Harrison, McCartney attempted to finish this and a couple of other tracks in a 1995 session. They completed “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” but even after trying “Now and Then” with Harrison adding a guitar solo, they felt they simply couldn’t get enough of Lennon’s voice off the cassette.
The song sat unfinished all these years, but when Peter Jackson began work on The Beatles: Get Back documentary, his engineers used technology to isolate Lennon’s vocals. In 2022, McCartney and Starr went back in the studio and finished out the song using Lennon’s demo and Harrison’s guitar part.
‘Now and Then’ was possible only because of AI
While it’s truly Lennon’s voice on the track, which has garnered such an emotional response from Beatles fans to hear it again, the studio miracle was possible only because of Jackson’s computers. Programmed with machine learning, a form of AI, they were able to separate Lennon’s vocals from his piano.
In a 15-minute promotional film released this week, the remaining Beatles said they were shocked at the clarity of Lennon’s vocal track.
“It was the closest we’ll ever come to having him back in the room,” Ringo Starr said. “Far out.”
“My dad would have loved it,” said Lennon’s son Sean Lennon, 48. “He was never shy to experiment with recording technology.”
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