Fans of The Beatles in Liverpool have queued outside HMV to buy the band’s new single, Now and Then, which went on sale at midnight. Even more incredible is that the person who took the coveted first spot in the queue was a man called John Lennon – his real name, and he even had the passport to prove it. According to Lennon, he started queueing at 8am the previous day and was determined to be first. Behind him was Brian Jackson, aged 62, who runs Liverpool-based record and memorabilia shop Allkinds, who has been a fan since he was four years old.
The song is based on a demo that John Lennon recorded at home in New York’s Dakota building two years before his murder there in 1980. Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, handed the tapes – including demos of Real Love and Free As a Bird – to the remaining members of the Beatles in 1994. While completed versions of those songs reached numbers two and four respectively in 1995 and 1996, the technical difficulties meant that Now and Then was left unfinished. George Harrison, the Beatles band member who declared the song “fucking rubbish,” died in 2001.
Nonetheless, recently, AI technology was used to isolate Lennon’s vocals – technology which Peter Jackson has used on The Beatles documentary, Get Back, in 2021. This allowed the song to be finished by Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. The song also features Harrison’s guitar parts from 1995, with the permission of his widow, Olivia.
Dr Holly Tessler, who runs a master’s program on the Beatles at the University of Liverpool, comments on the new single: “To my ears, it sounds like a John Lennon song that could have been on his last albums. However, it’s a John song that they’ve improved on. I’ve talked to people who’ve said ‘It’s not a Beatles song’ but it’s John, Paul, George and Ringo singing and playing – so what is that if not the Beatles?’”
Ahead of the release, a 12-minute making-of film was aired, which combined historical footage with film of the surviving Beatles working on Now and Then in 1995 and more recently. “To be told by Paul ‘This is definitely the last Beatles song’ felt like a seismic shift to me,” said director Oliver Murray. “It’s a full stop on the catalogue, but the legacy will go on.”
Read the full article from The Guardian here: Read More