It’s not a grand finale. It’s a wistful postscript.
“Now and Then,” launched on Thursday, is billed by its label, Apple Corps, as “the final Beatles tune.” It’s a lost-love tune reconstructed from a piano-and-vocal demo that John Lennon recorded within the late Nineteen Seventies, nicely after the Beatles broke up. Yoko Ono introduced it and different Lennon demos to the surviving Beatles in 1994.
Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr started constructing an association round Lennon’s recording in 1995, the yr they launched one other posthumous tune, “Free as a Bird,” on the compilation album “Anthology 1,” adopted by “Actual Love” on “Anthology 2” in 1996. “Now and Then” can be, inevitably, a advertising instrument. It’s the beforehand unreleased materials added to the expanded, remixed reissue of “The Beatles 1967-1970,” which arrives on Nov. 10 paired with an expanded, remixed model of “The Beatles 1962-1966.” These two compilations are higher referred to as the Blue and Purple albums.
“Now and Then” was the remaining tune the Beatles had labored on collectively, however McCartney has stated that Harrison grew annoyed and dismissed it as “[expletive] rubbish.”
Sound high quality was the principle drawback. Lennon’s voice shared the recorded observe with a murky-sounding piano. However within the 2020s, the software program that Peter Jackson used to isolate devices and voices from mono tracks for his 2021 “Get Again” documentary sequence might additionally extract and make clear Lennon’s lead vocal. Again within the studio, McCartney and Starr accomplished “Now and Then” utilizing tracks from 1995, new elements recorded in 2022, a brand new string-orchestra association and — from the Beatles’ session archives — backing vocals from “Right here, There and In all places,” “Eleanor Rigby” and “As a result of”: “oohs” and “ahs” in concord.
For all of the multitrack machinations, it’s Lennon’s open longing that carries “Now and Then.” He sings, “If I make it by way of, it’s all due to you” to a associate, buddy or lover who’s gone away, maybe without end. “From time to time I need you to be there for me/All the time to return to me.”
The melody is plaintive, in a minor key. The multi-decade association begins straightforwardly, with steadfast piano, guitar and drums — hinting at “Whereas My Guitar Gently Weeps” — after which vastly expands with orchestral strings. McCartney, who understands the Beatles’ musical mechanics from deep inside, replayed Lennon’s piano elements, and for the bridge he overdubbed a slide-guitar solo like one thing Harrison might need performed. The muscular string association, little question intentionally, echoes songs like “I Am the Walrus” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Membership Band.”
The completed observe simplifies Lennon’s emotional give-and-take; it edits out his misgivings about himself, the place Lennon sang, “I don’t wanna lose you, oh no no no/Abuse you or confuse you, oh no no no.” The concluding vocal of “Now and Then” additionally feels extra optimistic than the tolling chords on the finish of Lennon’s demo: “If I make it by way of, it’s all due to you.”
As in lots of Beatles songs, “Now and Then” has an surprising closing flourish: a decisive, syncopated string phrase. And low within the combine, after a remaining shake of a tambourine, a voice says, “Good one!”
Like the opposite posthumous Beatles tracks, “Now and Then” leans into nostalgia. Its existence issues greater than its high quality. For anybody who grew up on or got here to like the Beatles, there’s an additional pang in listening to the complete band’s final work collectively, at the same time as a digital assemblage.
In “Free as a Fowl” and “Actual Love,” Lennon sang about connection. However “Now and Then” copes with separation, one which has now been made remaining by mortality. The tune can’t evaluate to the music the 4 Beatles made collectively within the Sixties. All it may do is remind listeners of a synergy, musical and private, that’s now misplaced without end.
