The release of The Beatles’ final song “Now and Then,” has been a rocky road over the past several decades. With the aid of Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson, not only has the song been released, it has a new music video reuniting the band!
“Now and Then” began as a home demo from John Lennon, which the other members worked on in the mid-1990s. At the same time, the music pioneers released their only other post-breakup songs “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love.”
Unfortunately, a loud hum in Lennon’s original recording made the demo for “Now and Then” completely unusable. That is until 2021 when Jackson was directing the documentary mini-series “The Beatles: Get Back.” The filmmaker andhis team were able to use WingNut Films’ MAL audio AI technology to separate and isolate tracks.
Then Paul McCartney teamed up with famed producer George Martin’s son, Giles Martin, to finish the track. They mixed the original demo with material that George Harrison and Ringo Starr recorded in the ‘90s. This material was combined with audio recorded in 2022, including a new drumming by Starr, and audio samples from the original recordings of “Here, There and Everywhere,” “Eleanor Rigby,” and “Because.”
All of these elements combined to create a final audio version of “Now and Then.” But this is not where the song’s journey ends. Jackson then took unseen footage from a 1995 recording session and some home videos supplied by Lennon’s and Harrison’s families, to create a music video. Giving music fans a long-awaited reunion of The Beatles.
“At their core [The Beatles] were irreverent and funny, and the middle section should capture that spirit,” Jackson explained in a statement. “We needed to laugh at The Beatles, and laugh with them. They were always sending themselves up – and the more seriously other people took them, the more they would clown around.”
“Luckily we found a collection of unseen outtakes in the vault, where The Beatles are relaxed, funny and rather candid,” he explained. “These become the spine of our middle section, and we wove the humour into some footage shot in 2023. The result is pretty nutty and provided the video with much needed balance between the sad and the funny.”
“The Beatles: Get Back” mini-series is currently streaming on Disney+. You can check out the music video for “Now and Then” below, along with Jackson’s full statement on the creation of the song:
