The Beatles are back! Or, at least, a belated song based on a never-released John Lennon cassette demo that has been created through the wizardry of digital technology and the input of the band\u2019s surviving members.<\/p>\n
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\u201cNow and Then\u201d was recorded by Lennon in his Manhattan apartment during the late 1970s. In 1994, his widow Yoko Ono gave the cassette with \u201cNow and Then\u201d and two other Lennon tunes, \u201cFree as a Bird\u201d and \u201cReal Love.\u201d Lennon\u2019s bandmates Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr reunited to create Beatles singles using Lennon\u2019s vocals on \u201cFree as a Bird\u201d and \u201cReal Love,\u201d but \u201cNow and Then\u201d was problematic because Lennon accompanied himself on a piano for that demo and it was impossible to separate his voice from the piano\u2019s intrusive music.<\/p>\n
Fast-forward to 2022 and Peter Jackson, who completed the \u201cGet Back\u201d renovation of \u201cLet It Be,\u201d devised the technology to isolate Lennon\u2019s \u201cNow and Then\u201d vocals. McCartney and Starr recorded bass and drums, respectively, and a string orchestra was hired to fill in the recording. Harrison died in 2001, but recordings of his input from the previous sessions were included.<\/p>\n
Billed as the last Beatles song, \u201cNow and Then\u201d \u2013 both as a song and in this short documentary \u2013 offers a post-script to a band that never went out of favor. The film on the song\u2019s creation only offers hints of the finished product \u2013 the film went online a day before the song dropped \u2013 and it provides a jolly mix of clips of the Beatles over the decades as they come together (no pun intended) for one last hurrah, albeit as a digital jigsaw puzzle rather than a four-man collaboration.<\/p>\n