In 1995, The surviving members of The Beatles got back together just long enough to work on The Beatles Anthology. The miniseries had a set of three two-disc albums’ worth of alternates, outtakes, and two new songs. The first two volumes started off with one of John’s unreleased piano demos, which Paul, George, and Ringo would turn into a full-blown song. The first volume had “Free as a Bird.”

The Second volume had “Real Love.”

But there was no new song to kick off the last volume. Reportedly, the song they had in mind, “Now and Then,” had some serious issues that made it impossible to finish. And according to Jeff Lynne, “The song had a chorus but is almost totally lacking in verses. We did the backing track, a rough go that we really didn’t finish.” Here’s the original demo. Or at least what I think is the original demo.

But now it looks like it might be finished after all.

The New Recordings

I’ve mentioned before about how miraculous the Beatles: Get Back miniseries was. Peter Jackson brought material few believed would ever be officially released back to the public, obliterated the traditional narrative behind the sessions, and even created some new revelations even for this lifelong fan. He even restored the 50-year-old footage and sound engineer Emile de la Rey used AI to isolate the ancient tape recordings, which impressed Macca enough that he decided to use it to get the band back together just one more time. 

In a recent Radio 4 interview, Paul said “We had John’s voice and a piano and he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine, ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar.’ So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles’ record, it was a demo that John had [and] we were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI. Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you some sort of leeway. We just finished it up and it’ll be released this year.”

Admittedly, Paul has yet to confirm exactly which song he’s using, but circumstantial evidence seems to heavily imply that it is “Now and Then.” Of course, they tried to finish the song in 1995, but circumstances, from the technical problems Jeff Lynne mentioned, as well as George allegedly not liking the recording, prevented its release. Hopefully, Olivia Harrison will allow Paul and Ringo to use George’s recordings from the original sessions, or maybe engage in some Xenochrony.

The Future?

Though, despite this helpful use of AI, Paul McCartney has some misgivings about the technology, with him saying ““I’m not on the internet that much [but] people will say to me, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s a track where John’s singing one of my songs’, and it’s just AI, you know? It’s kind of scary but exciting, because it’s the future. We’ll just have to see where that leads.” At least it helped with his recent performances of “I’ve Got a Feeling.”

And talking about the future and AI, I’m reminded of something. Black Mirror Series Six is dropping on Thursday, and I plan to cover it soon. Here’s hoping I have it all down in time to cover both that and Glasto.