Now and Then

As you will know, a new, final Beatles song has been released. ‘Now and Then’ is based on a 70s Lennon piano demo. It was attempted during the ‘Threetles’ sessions of 1994-5 that also produced ‘Free as a Bird’ and ‘Real; Love’, but abandoned because of the difficulties involved in extracting John’s voice from the cassette, his piano, and various background noises. It’s also said that George Harrison thought the song was ‘fucking rubbish’, though Paul now claims he was referring to the quality of the recording. Paul has always wanted to finish ‘Now and Then’ and has floated the idea several times in interviews. Now, using the AI technology that Peter Jackson used so spectacularly to clean up the sound for his Get Back documentary, Lennon’s vocal has been newly isolated. Paul has restructured Lennon’s affecting but meandering draft composition into something more musically robust. George’s acoustic guitar from the 1995 sessions was mixed with new bass, drums and vocal from Paul and Ringo, with Giles Martin adding a string arrangement.

It is worth observing that ‘do I like it?’ is sometimes the least interesting thing to say about an artwork. Whatever anybody thinks about this song, a new track featuring all four of The Beatles is a gigantic event in world culture. It has a very clearly and deliberately valedictory quality; Paul has overseen this as a way of placing a final bracket around The Beatles, made even clearer by placing (a new mix of) ‘Love Me Do’, The Beatles’ first single, on the b-side. This is the alpha and the omega, the now and the then, with everything in between implied.

It is also a song replete with signification. Despite the graphic that The Beatles have been using to promote the song (above), I gather that John did not give the song fragment a title. The title is Paul’s choice and undoubtedly resonates with the last words John spoke to him face to face ‘Think of me, old friend, now and then’. These words would tear Paul apart when, soon after John’s death, Carl Perkins presented Paul a new song called, coincidentally, ‘Now and Then’ and it prompted a whole new access of grief. For Paul, one senses, the song is John’s love letter to him.

But it is also, for Paul, his love letter to John. The whole labour of working on this song, keeping faith in it, lavishing care and attention, offering discreet buttressing and support to the song, without drawing attention to himself (no ‘Whatever happened to / The love that we once knew…’ middle-eight here, as there is in ‘Free as a Bird’), playing and singing with John’s voice in his ears, this is all a labour of love.

For us, it is also a song about The Beatles, our love for them and their thanks to us, but also a reflection on this moment.. It feels like a bittersweet acknowledgement that while they are back with new music they’re not really back. The song’s (in some ways) incoherent lyrical play with leaving and staying resonates with the ubiquitous presence of The Beatles and their regretted absence. The song itself is both an announcement that we’re back and this is the end.

I listened to it on a train to work a few minutes after 2pm on Thursday. I remember hearing ‘Free as a Bird’ when it was first broadcast on BBC Radio 1 in December 1995. (‘I have to say, that’s very disappointing’ intoned the forgotten DJ.) Now - as then - I am struck by how extraordinarily, bafflingly recognisable Ringoi’s drumming is. It’s the first thing you hear on ‘Free as a Bird’ and that heavy, powerful, slamming sound, but with elegantly surprising flurries and fills enlivens ‘Now and Then’ immensely. Ringo makes a track ‘The Beatles’ every bit as much as John’s voice.

And oh my, it is arresting how clear the voice is. Unlike ‘Free as a Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ where the voice, wreathed in echo, the recording smothered in synth pads and a more self-consciously Beatlesy production from Jeff Lynne, floated spectrally above the song, here he feels almost upsettingly alive and present, right at the heart of the song. In ‘Free as a Bird’ Paul sounded, paradoxically, younger than John. Now Paul’s older voice sits quietly under John’s springy thirtysomething vocal (which sounds, somehow, younger than on ‘Love Me Do’).

Do I like it? Yes, very much. It’s a superb bit of craft by Paul, subtly repointing and sharpening the song, and the arrangement gives it purpose and drive. Giles Martin’s string arrangement is a sensitive Martin Family string arrangement. He has not tried to write something that sounds like his father’s work any more than he tries to sound like his father when he speaks; he just does, and it just does.

Some people have criticised the lyrics. They are simple, they say; sentimental, even trite; some of them seem to have a boilerplate quality that might have been fixed later had John taken it to the studio. All of this may be true, but The Beatles always knew that lyrics were parts of songs and it’s the overall effect that matters. Part of what Paul has done for John, a last fond favour, is to build the song so that these simple words seem Ruch and full. I detect something deliberate in the slightness of the lyrics: ‘now and then / I want you to be there for me / Always to return to me’ seems to me a rather affecting juxtaposition of the fleeting and the permanent, a mock-casual tone that masks deep feeling. Which could not be more John.

I am sure that, at some point, someone will be inclined to create more new Beatles tracks. There are more John demos. There are reputed to be things the Threetles worked on (‘Grow Old With Me’? ‘All for Love’?). There may be 60s fragments that could be finished. Generative AI might be involved; significant artists might be involved and, who knows, the results might even be good. But I am sure neither Paul or Ringo would want any part in it. This is too good an ending to spoil.

And that of course that’s why I can’t hear this without mourning. It has the quality of a last door closing;. It’s a new Beatles song that says there will be no more. It says hello, goodbye.