You have never gotten over the breakup of the Beatles, even though it happened in 1970. You scrutinize everything they ever did, front to back, looking for new meaning in every archival scrap, the outtakes, alternate takes, and rehearsals revealed on the reissues that come out to celebrate another anniversary. (The present is a mixed bag, but the sound keeps improving.)
You watched every moment of Peter Jackson’s nearly eight-hour documentary, The Beatles: Get Back. Sure, George left, and you understood why, but then he came back, and the magic circles kept widening. Reality was just too much to maintain the fab. They had to grow up and apart from each other. But a true Beatles fan never wants to let go.
Some people face reality, but when it comes to all things Beatles, nothing is real. You grasp for new scenarios. You make playlists from solo Beatle albums and listen to a song by John, followed by Paul and George, because that’s as close as you’ll get. And you think of what might have been.
In 1974, four years after the breakup, John apparently wanted to write songs with Paul again. A TV movie was made about the last time they saw each other. They had friendly phone conversations after that, and on the last one, John said to his onetime partner and sometime frenemy, “Think of me every now and then, my old friend.”
A true Beatles fan never wants to let go.
We know we must grow up. John and George are gone, and we were lucky to get “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” based on John’s demos, in the mid-90s, now both in the Beatles canon. Those recordings were a miracle. Did we think we would get another one?
It turned out that when Yoko slipped John’s demos to Paul, there was a third track, and the title, “Now and Then,” eerily recalled the last thing John ever said to Paul. George, Paul, and Ringo tried to make a track based on the demo, just like they did with the other two songs. “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” were recorded with a drum machine that kept John in time. This one was all over the place. In 1994, you could not separate the vocal from the rest of the track.
But Peter Jackson showed Paul that, with A.I., nothing can be real once again—you can hear the naked voice of John Lennon as if he were right there in the room with you. You can hear George playing rhythm guitar, Paul playing piano, electric harpsichord, and shaker, Ringo on drums, tambourine, and yet another shaker. The bloody Beatles live again.
Peter Jackson showed Paul that, with A.I., nothing can be real once again—you can hear the naked voice of John Lennon as if he were right there in the room with you.
A.I. is not always a force for good, but for this it offered pearls beyond price. It’s the technology that allowed Paul to take the sound of George’s slide guitar and play a solo. Two Beatles were alive for this production, but the other two were still present. You hear the voices of all four Beatles. They are here to reassure you. Love, their great theme, is bigger than death.
It started as a simple song. Who knows what John would have thought? But then, he dismissed some of his greatest work, anyway. And listen to those voices, those harmonies, that guitar gently weeping, the strings swelling. “I know it’s true, it’s all because of you / And if I make it through, it’s all because of you.” The “you” could have been Yoko, but it’s all of us, too.
John did not make it through, and we all know why, and it will never be O.K. George also did not make it through, and this is also unacceptable. Yet we have their voices. And we have the sound of keeping love alive.
The verses are John, the bridge is Paul. You can hear John’s discarded bridge on YouTube. In a falsetto, he sings, “I don’t want to lose you, oh no / Lose you or abuse you, oh no.” It has been 45 years. Paul changed the chords, the melody, the lyrics, as he keeps getting older and the song is no longer about the living. Many years from now is now is right now. You can hear Paul in harmony with John, George, and his younger self—with harmonies from “Here, There and Everywhere,” “Eleanor Rigby,” and “Because”—to get back to something from a long time ago, something that is still in our present.
We mourn, we grieve, we age, we face the inevitable, yet through A.I. there is one more track. Paul never got to tell John that he loved him. Now he can, and he can even share a harmony with him while doing it. “Now and then, I miss you / Oh, now and then, I want you to be there for me / Always to return to me.” The eternal return. Life goes on within you and without you. All the chanting is about accepting it. And yet, letting go is unbearable. Are they really here again?
On the bridge, we hear Ringo’s baritone harmonizing with Paul and, from the other side, John and George. The Beatles were gearheads in their time. George brought a Minimoog to the Abbey Road sessions, and you can hear the analog synthesizer on a few tracks, including a distortion patch on “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” That was the last track recorded with all four Beatles in the room. They looked forward all the way to the last track.
The Red and Blue collections (1962–66 and 1967–70) will be reissued with tracks that have been demixed and remixed and kept alive through the latest sonic wizardry, and “Now and Then” will be placed at the end of the Blue collection.
It is 2023. You don’t even want to think about what’s going on. The present is unbearable. It’s all too much, you say, and it just keeps coming. And yet—this is the last time you will read these words—there is a new Beatles track, patched together with something old, something long gone, and something gloriously alive.
This is a trip back to the Beatles. It started with a simple melody from a private recording, and it turned into a production carrying that weight of the world. Whomever John was singing to into a cassette recorder at the Dakota, it is now for everyone. There will be a single. On one side will be “Love Me Do,” their first. On the other will be “Now and Then,” their last. It’s wonderful to be here. It’s certainly a thrill.
“Now and Then” is available for streaming now
David Yaffe is a professor of humanities at Syracuse University. He writes about music and is the author, most recently, of Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell. You can read his Substack here