Paul McCartney completes John Lennon song as final Beatles single
John Lennon wrote and roughly recorded, but never ever issued, Now And Then. But thanks to the power of artificial intelligence, it seems his former bandmate has finished the final Beatles song.
A “new” Beatles single – almost certainly the abandoned Now and Then from the 1995 Anthology sessions – will be issued this year.
Paul McCartney told the BBC on Wednesday that he had used artificial intelligence to record what he insists will be the final Beatles song.
Unlike other uses of AI, in which dead artists have been “revived” to sing songs they never did, the technology on this occasion has been used to better fillet out John Lennon’s vocals from a clouded brew of resonating piano and electrostatic interference.
“We just finished it up and it’ll be released this year,” McCartney said.
Now and Then was one of four songs on two dodgy cassette tapes Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, gave Paul McCartney in 1994 when McCartney inducted Lennon into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
From the Anthology sessions the following year, two singles emerged – Free as a Bird and Real Love – to accompany the eight-episode television series and three double CDs that charted the life of the most influential band of the 20th century.
When the then three surviving Beatles – McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison – joined the Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne as producer in February 1995 at McCartney’s Sussex studio they started work on Now and Then. The three Beatles and Ono had agreed that any of the four could veto an idea they thought wasn’t working.
On day two, Harrison exercised his veto objecting to the thin Lennon vocals that were in any case smothered by piano and undermined by static possibly generated by the elevator in the Lennons’ Dakota Apartments building on Manhattan.
Lennon had recorded the songs, probably in October 1977, in mono on a tape recorder sitting on his piano at a time when he and Ono were considering a stage show to be called The Ballad of John and Yoko.
Lennon had barely worked them out himself and plods along trying to recall the chords. He’d have had the lyric sheet with him, but Lennon never learned to read music.
Now and Then is similarly unhurried, and its lyrics incomplete with Lennon singing meaningless words to fill in the yet-uncharted gaps (although, playfully, he would sometimes keep these either through laziness or mischief).
The song has a rich Beatles-like melody resonant of the 1967-68 era that produced such classics as Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day in the Life and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
The back half of the 1995 version that survives on the internet is all super fan Lynne’s work, and sounds very much like ELO’s Eldorado from the 1974 album of that name.
“The song had a chorus but is almost totally lacking in verses,” said Lynne after is was abandoned in 1995. “We did the backing track, a rough go that we really didn’t finish.”
But McCartney never gave up on the track he described as “lingering around”. “I’ve got to nick in with Jeff and do it. Finish it.”
And it appears he has.
It’s 53 years ago that the Beatles scored their final No.1 hit with The Long and Winding Road (which was to have been the title of the Anthology series, but Harrison rejected that as well).
Free as a Bird – with Lynne joining the surviving Beatles on background vocals and playing some guitar – rose to No.2 in the UK charts, to No.6 in Australia, and on Billboard and was a top 10 hit around the world. The Beatles scored 20 No.1 hits on Billboard, the most of any artist.
The last solo Beatle to have a No.1 song was George Harrison with the Lynne-produced Got My Mind Set On You from 1987.
Paul McCartney’s Egypt Station album went to No.1 on Billboard in 2018.
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