Released on 2 November, with barely a fortnight of fan-fare preceding it, the single aptly entitled “Now and Then” is a 28-year labour-of-love which started in 1995 with then surviving members Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
Due to the technological constraints of the time, it remained unreleased until this year when machine learning AI software was able to aid in extracting and isolating certain parts from John Lennon’s demo track helping to breathe new life into the song.
For this reason, the announcement of the release was met with quite a few raised eyebrows. Would it sound like some cheapened version of the Fab Four? Would it try too hard to recapture a long-lost feeling, only to fall quite brutally short?
Or would it be abittersweet reconciliation of the past and present? An intimate love letter, a goodbye and a reminder like no other of the band’s monumental mark on the world?
It begins with a stoic, totally engulfing piano piece that seems to draw the breath from out of your lungs with the weight it carries. Lennon’s voice, clear, unmistakable and charismatic, sets in as the piano begins to mimic his vocal melody.
“I know it’s true. It’s all because of you… and if I make it through, it’s all because of you”. It’s him playing and singing. It’s his ballad that makes it through the almost 50-year gap in time since he first recorded it on tape from the comfort of his home.
At this point, the Beatles fans in the room are misty-eyed (present company included) and still a little stunned. Where any other Beatles song may have transported you emotionally, this one is also quite seamlessly taking you on a journey through time.
It’s beautifully crafted with some obvious and some not-so-obvious call-backs to the band’s iconic style of songwriting. The instrumentals and choruses drunk in vocal harmonies, the orchestration of the strings section reminiscent of their more mature and boundary-pushing material and the ever-present “middle eight” structure that filled so many of their hits with colour.
But the stand-out here are the lyrics. Penned by Lennon sometime between the highly publicised splitting-up of the Beatles in 1970 and his tragic death in 1980, they deliver an incredibly strong sense of yearning and perhaps some inclination of hope that at the time things could have started anew for the band with enough time.
“And now and then. If we must start again. Well, we will know for sure, that I will love you / Now and then, I miss you / Oh, now and then I want you to be there for me / Always to return to me”.
Lennon’s voice at this point is accompanied by McCartney’s backing vocal. The two voices sit perfectly together despite the difference in ages.
McCartney is now 81 and the tremble in his voice is not a stylistic choice. It unwillingly contrasts Lennon’s hopefulness, reminding you of just how impossible it would be for The Beatles to start anew. Still, it adds such depth to the song that the track becomes something else entirely.
A conversation that never got the chance for closure.
Melodically, the chord progression doubles down on this theme. The final lines of each verse never land on a resolution, rolling straight into the start of the next verse. Even the bridge, which offers some upliftment in the mood, doesn’t quite resolve itself before inevitably returning to the verse melody. The song seems to be continuously lingering, like you would on the final pages of a really good book.
The final verse of the song is lyrically a repetition of the first verse.
“I know it’s true. It’s all because of you / and if I make it through, it’s all because of you”.
Lennon almost acknowledging the feat it took for his band of brothers to release this final track.
McCartney abandons the harmony at this point and instead sings the main melody alongside Lennon, just as they had done countless times since the age of 14.
It feels like an embrace, the only part of the song that resembles any sense of finality.
It’s only after Lennon and McCartney have stopped singing, that the track finds quite a resolute end.
Settling the dust around it, the final song of The Beatles.
It’s all made terribly more beautiful when you find out that Lennon’s last words to McCartney, 4 years before his death, were “Think about me every now and then, old friend”.
It reminds you of the band’s incomparable ability to write life… even after death.
As the track fades, there are few seconds of dead air. You can hear McCartney faintly say, “That’s a good one”. You’d be wrong to disagree.
