The two living members of the legendary Liverpool band, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, made the November 2 release of “Now and Then” official on Thursday.
“Now And Then” is the Beatles’ final song, written and sung by John Lennon, developed and worked on by Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, and finally completed by Paul and Ringo more than four decades later. The song was made from a demo recorded in the 1970s by John Lennon in his New York apartment. After his assassination in 1980, his widow Yoko Ono handed over the tape, with vocals and piano, to the other members of the group in 1994. The latter had reworked and completed it but were never able to release it, the techniques then available not making it possible to extract John Lennon’s voice with sufficient quality.
AI to recreate John Lennon’s voice
This is now the case. The trigger came from the documentary series “Get Back” produced in 2021 by Peter Jackson. The director of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy then extracted Lennon’s voice from a cassette by separating it from the piano, helped by new technologies using artificial intelligence. “We ended up with John’s voice, crystal clear“, explained Paul McCartney, quoted in the press release announcing the release of this title. “It’s very moving and we all play to it, it’s a real Beatles recording“, estimated the 81-year-old musician.
Added to the original demo were electric and acoustic guitar recordings by George Harrison dating from 1995, before his death in 2001. The song was completed last year in Los Angeles studios, mixing drums from Ringo Starr, the piano and bass of Paul McCartney, and the vocals of the two living Beatles. “It was very emotional for all of us. It’s like John is among us“said Ringo Starr, 83.
Latest recording
In April 1970, six months after the release of the album “Abbey Road” and a month before that of “Let it be”, the Beatles announced their separation. The ten years of collaboration between Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr produced 14 best-selling albums, nearly a billion records sold and resulted in the filming of several films. Despite the death of Lennon in 1980 and that of Harrison in 2001, “Beatlemania” remains alive throughout the world and the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence (AI) have already inspired attempts by fans to bring them together, or to revisit the latest works of Paul McCartney with his youthful voice.
When asked about these developments by the BBC last June, McCartney revealed the preparation of this new song. “We came to make what would be the last Beatles recording, it was a demo of John’s that we worked from“, McCartney explained. Faced with the questions provoked by this announcement, he then clarified: “Nothing was created artificially or synthetically, everything is true. (…). We cleaned up some recordings.” He hadn’t named the song but everything indicated it would be “Now and Then“.
The existence of the model was known and Paul McCartney had made no secret of wanting to give the piece a new life. But he had always explained that the project did not succeed due to the opposition of George Harrison who did not like it. The song will be sold from 2:00 p.m. GMT on November 2. The day before, a 12-minute documentary, directed by Oliver Murray (author of a film about the Rolling Stones), will be released on the Beatles’ YouTube channel. On November 10, two compilations of their albums will be released, supplemented with additional tracks.