The final Beatles song, “Now And Then,” is out now. After much buzz, the mid-tempo ballad certainly lives up to the hype.
As previously reported, the track’s origins stem from a John Lennon demo that was first worked on by Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in 1995 as part of The Beatles Anthology. Peter Jackson and his team were able to develop new audio technology while making the 2021 docuseries The Beatles: Get Back. As a result, “Now And Then” could be completed.
“Now And Then” is available in a variety of formats at The Beatles.com. Those formats include cassette and a number of vinyl pressings. The track is available for streaming and download here.
The Making of ‘Now And Then’
A mini-documentary on the making of “Now And Then” was released yesterday (Nov. 1). Jackson says in the mini-doc, “During the course of ‘Get Back,’ we were paying a lot of attention to the technical restoration. That ultimately led us to develop a technology, which allows us to take any soundtrack and split all the different components into separate tracks based on machine learning.”
When Jackson and his team developed this technology, McCartney gave the director Lennon’s original demo for him to work with.
McCartney recalls, “They said, ‘This is the sound of John’s voice.’ [imitates computer noise] A few seconds later or however long it took, and there it was: John’s voice, crystal clear … In the mix, we could lift John’s voice without lifting the piano, which had always been one of the problems. Now, we could mix it and make a proper record of it.”
Starr added, “Since Peter took John off and gave him his own track, it’s like John’s there, you know. It’s far out.”
Sean Lennon noted of this technology, “My dad would’ve loved that, because he was never shy to experiment with recording technology. I think it’s really beautiful.”