The Beatles’ swan song Now and Then resurfaces 53 years later. This is what is sounds like
As the encore played before the curtain falls on the Beatles catalogue, Now and Then is a perfect swan song: melodic, collaborative, moving and valedictory | LISTEN
When Paul McCartney opens his eyes somewhere in Queensland on Friday morning, for a moment, it’ll feel just like the old days: millions of people will be rushing to hear new work by his old band, The Beatles.
Bursting from speakers, earbuds and smartphones around the world will come the voice of his late friend John Lennon, whose haunting and elegiac song marks the final Beatles single release, issued 53 years after the Fab Four called it a day in 1970.
Titled Now and Then, the four-minute ballad caps the most remarkable recording career in popular music. “I know it’s true / It’s all because of you,” sings Lennon in a keening voice in its opening lines. “And if I make it through / It’s all because of you.”
First recorded as a cassette demo by Lennon a few years before he was murdered in 1980, it was reopened as a recording session in 1995 with his three surviving bandmates in George Harrison (guitar), Ringo Starr (drums) and McCartney (bass).
The trio decided not to complete the song at the time because they were unable to satisfactorily separate Lennon’s vocals and piano from the hiss of the tape recording.
However, artificial intelligence technology overseen by film director Peter Jackson has since allowed the individual vocal and instrumental components of Now and Then to be rescued from analog purgatory.
It is an extraordinary feat of engineering, ingenuity and drive, and with a few overdubs played by McCartney and Starr, it’s why the song is now reaching millions of ears at last.
Today, they’re the only two Beatles still walking the earth, and it’s fortuitous that one of them happens to be on Australian soil when the group issues its final recording at 1am AEDT on Friday.
In a three-hour performance with his band, McCartney thrilled about 40,000 fans at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium on Wednesday night. As the hundreds of thousands of tour attendees will attest, witnessing the 81-year-old breathe fresh air into songs old and new is a mind-bendingly profound experience.
With six superlative concerts under his belt since the debut in Adelaide on October 18, McCartney is resting his voice and hands ahead of his Got Back tour finale at the Gold Coast on Saturday. Next stop: Mexico City, followed by Brazil.
Starr, meanwhile, is likely at home in Los Angeles when the final Beatles track hits the global airwaves on Friday. The 83-year-old completed a US tour with His All-Starr Band on October 13, and recently released a four-track EP titled Rewind Forward.
In Now and Then, an undertow of longing runs through the lyrics, and a legion of Beatles fans might be moved to project those words onto the singer himself, who died nearly 43 years ago.
In its chorus, Lennon sings, “Now and then / I miss you / Oh now and then / I want you to be there for me / Always to return to me.”
In the song’s middle eight, the arrangement expands to let in a swelling string section and the sumptuous vocal harmonies for which the band became famous, while McCartney plays a slide guitar solo in tribute to parts originally recorded by Harrison in 1995, six years before his death from cancer at 58.
The final song release on Friday arrives ahead of remixed and expanded editions of two Beatles compilations: on November 10, Universal Music will issue in 2023 edition packages of both ‘1962-1966’ (The Red Album) and ‘1967-1970’ (The Blue Album) in 4CD and 180g 6LP vinyl formats.
Only two remain today, but what those four musicians managed to achieve together in a shockingly short time frame is astounding: it’s easy to forget it was just seven years from the first Beatles album release in 1963 to its 12th and final set in 1970.
Since we got them into our lives, the quartet’s songs have been superglued to our collective soul and stitched into the fabric of what holds us together in times of joy and sorrow.
Now and then, the group is peerless, for its songwriting and musical abilities influenced all who came after.
As the encore played before the curtain falls on the Beatles catalogue, Now and Then is a perfect swan song: melodic, collaborative, moving, valedictory and triumphant.
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