OT: Final Beatles Song

[SamuelBLupowitz]

It's sort of off topic, but who among us can't count The Beatles as, at the very least, an indirect influence on our musicianship?

 

If you haven't heard about this, there was a third unfinished John Lennon demo that Paul, George, and Ringo worked on during the Anthology project, which gave us Free as a Bird and Real Love. But the balance between the piano and John's voice on the third song, Now and Then, left the vocal irreparably obscured, and despite recording drums, bass, and guitars in the 90s, the track went abandoned.

 

Then, 25 years later, Peter Jackson worked his magic on the vaulted Let It Be footage to create 2021's Get Back films. Part of that process was the creation of a machine learning algorithm that could recognize the individual Beatles' voices and separate them from other sounds on a recording.

 

Paul realized this same approach could be used to isolate John's vocal on his old demo tape. So the work on the track from the 90s (which already featured some guitar by George Harrison) was resumed, with Paul and Ringo adding new bass, drums, piano, and guitar, and Giles Martin (son of Beatles producer George) contributing a string arrangement.

 

It's been a rough few weeks in the world, and I wasn't ready for what it would be like to hear a new song (in all likelihood, the last) by the band that made me a musician. While I quietly weep at my desk, I wanted to share with all of you, too.

 

 

More information in this mini-doc about the process of finishing the track:

 

 

[Bill H.]

This song could easily be about how those of us who grew up in the 1960s feel about the Beatles - both now and then.

 

It's more than just a curiosity - it's a really good track. I urge everyone to give it a listen. 

[MathOfInsects]

Like you, it really moved me. I didn't expect it to hit so hard. It's a very strong track from them, head and shoulders above the other two post-mortem releases from those tapes. Something about them calling it the "last" Beatles single also brings home how close we are to losing the remaining two members. The whole thing feels very poignant, somehow moreso because of the strength of this track as a song and a release, let alone the giving of life to John's voice and George's guitar. 

[zxcvbnm098]

Ditto. Lovely and poignant. John has now been gone longer than he walked the earth, which is weird to think about. The technology to separate tracks is pretty remarkable, and put to excellent use here. 

[David Emm]

Its not at all OT; its The Beatles, after all. The song is very fine and a welcome moment of worthy nostalgia. AI is already being abused in some places, but this was an honorable application. Paul & Ringo were good with it. So am I.

[elsongs]

I was born a year after The Beatles broke up, so I could never call myself a true "Beatles Fan" like most of you here who are older than me, though I am appreciative of their work. I did follow the new "Anthology" tracks released in the '90s (I bought all 3 "Anthology" CD releases), so I was really interested to hear this. 

I like it, it's haunting, wistful, beautiful. I love the strings. 

The only thing I don't like is the squishy, overcompressed mastering job. Yeah I know it's meant to do its tour of duty in the Loudness Wars, but I'd like to hear a more dynamic version.

Also, I wonder if they could run John's vocals on his "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love" demos through the same software to update those tracks with cleaner Lennon vocal tracks (and just leaving all the other tracks intact). I forgave the tape noise back then since that's all they could do at the time, but now it's like Paul, George and Ringo did a track with John Lennon samples.

[HammondDave]

Awesome cut.  With a great bridge… I wonder who composed that?  John sounds great.  

[nursers]

Love the song and it also brought a tear to my eye. With the 12-min video I did struggle a little with how certain Paul was that John would definitely have loved what they had done. But I'm glad they did it.

[bjosko]

New video up today

 

 

[Outkaster]

That video is wild.  

[Jose EB5AGV]

Wow, that last video brings me so many emotions!

[DJkeys]

Thanks so much for posting this.  Another amazing Beatles song and story.  

 

-dj

[Tusker]

Really emotional about this, Thanks for posting. 

[Bill H.]

I don't know who the inspiration was for this song (Yoko? May Pang?) In the video Paul largely frames it as his feelings towards John. For me, it's more encompassing. Throughout my youth, no matter what I was going through, the Beatles were there. When I was happy, sad, lonely, dealing with the pressures of college... the one constant in my life was the Beatles. They were always there. 

 

Now and then
I miss you
Oh, now and then
I want you to be there for me
Always to return to me

[jerrythek]

14 hours ago, HammondDave said:

Awesome cut.  With a great bridge… I wonder who composed that?  John sounds great.  

No doubt it was John - it came from a tape of demos he made in his home... I don't think he was collaborating with anyone during those years.

[ElmerJFudd]

Lovely trip down memory lane with the video. 
 

The John vocal is remarkably clean for being pulled from a cassette.  We’ll continue to be impressed by what AI can do with digitized material. 

[zxcvbnm098]

Personally I think they overdid the superimposing of them with current footage of Paul and Ringo, but the last 30 seconds or so are really touching, with the bowing and then the fade out. The technology is really amazing even with my comment above.

 

Here are some of the details...

 

https://pitchfork.com/news/peter-jackson-directs-new-video-for-the-beatles-final-song-now-and-then-watch/

 

[mate stubb]

The mix got muddy to me when everything was going on. I lost the drums at one point. I've only listened on crap computer speakers though.

[Jose EB5AGV]

Rick Beato's take on this song:

 

 

[UnderGroundGr]

Both song and video are really nice!

[Radagast]

It’s not my favorite of the final 3 songs.

[elsongs]

6 hours ago, jerrythek said:

No doubt it was John - it came from a tape of demos he made in his home... I don't think he was collaborating with anyone during those years.

The instrumental Bridge in the full recording differs from the demo recording, which was obviously just a rough, incomplete sketch intended by Lennon to further flesh out at a later date (which never happened as he intended for whatever reason). It's safe to assume Paul did the final arrangement (strings arranged by Giles Martin) and composed the new Bridge, based on some of the chords Lennon used for his intended B section.

[MathOfInsects]

^^^ All of that. This recording has been floating around since Anthology.

I can't stop listening to this track. I hope the Beatles get to close out their career with a Grammy. Bonnie Raitt may have ruined it for them by winning last year and making the RA have to think twice about giving it to another legacy act. But what a fitting bookend that would make for the group that essentially invented the industry as we know it. Fitting, too, for it to be a John song that does it (and for it then to have been sheened up by Paul). 

 

[JohnH]

1 hour ago, Radagast said:

It’s not my favorite of the final 3 songs.

Yeah, I had to go binge a bunch of Toto after hearing it again on Beato. Sorry, it just isn't for me. I've seen other articles and people on my FB that don't like it either. There's not any wrong or right reaction. It is all personal taste. It does make me realize, there's not going to be any kind of magical finds or discoveries, such as a lost Revolver album or Golden Slumbers, it's done. That's great they did this and to each their own. What they should do is go fix the other two songs now that the technology to do this has gone into the stratosphere from the 90's.

[BMD]

The song's target audience isn't the general public. It's aimed at fans of The Beatles. And it's quite obviously a love letter from John to Paul

 

If you're not a dyed-in-the-wool Beatles fan you just won't get it

[elsongs]

35 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

^^^ All of that. This recording has been floating around since Anthology.

I can't stop listening to this track. I hope the Beatles get to close out their career with a Grammy. Bonnie Raitt may have ruined it for them by winning last year and making the RA have to think twice about giving it to another legacy act. But what a fitting bookend that would make for the group that essentially invented the industry as we know it. Fitting, too, for it to be a John song that does it (and for it then to have been sheened up by Paul). 

 

They missed the eligibility window for the 2024 Grammys though. But based on your theory, they'll have a good chance in 2025.

The eligibility period for the 2024 GRAMMYs is for recordings released Oct. 1, 2022, through Sept. 15, 2023. All eligible awards entries must be released within this timeframe.

[Docbop]

3 minutes ago, BMD said:

And it's quite obviously a love letter from John to Paul

I don't think it was love letter from John to Paul I think it was about the Beatles finally coming to an end.   

 

They wanted to make it a final Beatles song, but I wish they would of just used the tech to get good track of John's vocal and the piano and just be a good recording of John by himself. 

[Radagast]

59 minutes ago, BMD said:

The song's target audience isn't the general public. It's aimed at fans of The Beatles. And it's quite obviously a love letter from John to Paul

 

If you're not a dyed-in-the-wool Beatles fan you just won't get it

From what I’ve read, the song had nothing to do with John’s feelings towards Paul.  I was a big Beatles fan growing up.  I had all their albums.  Just because it has the name Beatles on it doesn’t make it great.  I liked Free As a Bird better. This isn’t a bad song, but it’s not one of the Beatles’ greatest either.

[Docbop]

30 minutes ago, Radagast said:

This isn’t a bad song, but it’s not one of the Beatles’ greatest either.

 

I don't think people are looking at this as a great Beatles song, it was one of many songs John wrote probably daily like songwriters do.  That's why I would of liked it as just John and the piano as one of his works in progress.    What does makes it important and meaningful is it the official finish line for the Beatles.   That's what brought a tear to my eye listening to it and all my Beatle memories. 

[elsongs]

33 minutes ago, Radagast said:

From what I’ve read, the song had nothing to do with John’s feelings towards Paul.  I was a big Beatles fan growing up.  I had all their albums.  Just because it has the name Beatles on it doesn’t make it great.  I liked Free As a Bird better. This isn’t a bad song, but it’s not one of the Beatles’ greatest either.

Yeah, the recording that was presented to Paul on cassette was just an unfinished demo. As a songwriter myself, I have tons of tapes and audio files of myself humming or singing temp lyrics while I'm playing piano or guitar, meant to be further fleshed out later. That's what John did. The fact that he redundantly sings the line "it's all because of you" twice as a couplet rhyme in the first verse means that most likely in a hypothetical finished version, one or both of those "it's all because of you" lines would be changed to something else later on. The song as it was recorded is not a finished product lyrically, and John would/might have wanted to revise the lyrics at a later time. 

But the beauty of music is that the listener appropriates the lyrics to their own personal interpretations or sentiments - Just imagine how every non-English speaker appreciates an English-language song. They might not even understand the literal lyrical meaning at all - but what they do hear still sounds nice to their ears for various reasons.