On Nov. 2, the Beatles will be back with a new song – one that is also being billed as the final collaboration of Liverpool’s finest.
“Now and Then” was written and initially recorded as a demo on a cassette player in the late 1970s by John Lennon at his New York City home in the Dakota apartment complex. Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, gave the recording to Lennon’s former bandmate Paul McCartney in 1994 – the cassette also included Lennon’s solo recordings of “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” which McCartney completed with fellow ex-Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr and later released as singles. But Lennon’s vocals and piano on “Now and Then” could not be separated in a new recording with the other Beatles. Harrison died in 2001, leaving “Now and Then” uncompleted.
More recently, filmmaker Peter Jackson provided artificial intelligence-based software to isolate Lennon’s singing from his piano playing. A Harrison guitar performance from 1995 was integrated into the performance, along with vocals from the earlier Beatles songs.
A documentary on the making of “Now and Then” will premiere on the Beatles’ YouTube channel on Nov. 1 and the song will be released in digital, vinyl, and cassette editions the following day.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
