Now and Then; Then and Now
A Review of the "last" song by The Beatles
There was a time when the Beatles could do no wrong. They could record and release anything on vinyl without the worry of losing fans because the fans always gave them unqualified support. I used to feel the same way and considering how much I love the band, (it’s The Beatles for pete’s sake) the new single has me a little perplexed. The cover art is banal, almost shy in its simple design. The band’s name isn’t on the cover. Was this really meant to be released? Was it meant to be heard?
When Paul McCartney announced the release of a new Beatles song, their last, heads turned. New song? Last song? What was he on about? I thought the band had wound up back in 1994 with the release of “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love”, two constructed tracks written by John Lennon and finished by McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
I was wrong.
As revealed in the documentary, days before the release of the new single, when the remaining band members were in the studio finishing up their, what I thought, were their two last songs, another was in production. It was Lennon’s demo of “Now and Then” a lovely ballad written in his Dakota apartment in New York. The track featured Lennon at the piano hammering out a tune that, in retrospect, would have worked well on Double Fantasy his comeback album of 1980. Yet it didn’t make the cut perhaps because he couldn’t finish it.
So let’s consider the new song in the context of the other two released during the autumn of 1994.
“Free As a Bird” and “Real Love” hold up remarkably well, in my opinion. The songs have just enough nostalgia and musical interest to hold my attention. I prefer the hazy, psychedelic groove of “Free As a Bird.” The production values are a little off-center, part of The Beatles’s underlying sound after 1966, with a feel for “I Am the Walrus” that sits in the pocket.
“Real Love” is bright capturing the younger version of the Beatles. It has all the elements of the band’s love songs and mid-tempo ballads. Many first generation fans, including my brother who saw the group in Toronto in 1965, prefer it. These tracks are like postscripts to a long, beautiful love letter from the Fab Four.
“Now and Then” has to be considered in that context. Nothing in Lennon’s demo changed musically on his original cassette. It was frozen in time. Also the fact that McCartney, Harrison and Starr were spent after working on the other two singles. Harrison wasn’t pleased with the quality of the original recording that featured an annoying buzz on the tape. And so it sat on the shelf until this year when Peter Jackson, director of the first-rate Get Back movie, enlisted his sound experts to work on the original Lennon demo. And they did a marvelous job, AI notwithstanding.
The result is one of the best produced, arranged and mixed “Beatles” songs on record. The string arrangement alone is worthy of anything the band did in the past with George Martin. It comes as no surprise, to me at least, that Giles Martin’s participation on the track brings it home. He and orchestrator Ben Foster capture the band’s familiar string sound echoing “Yesterday,” “Eleanor Rigby” and “She’s Leaving Home.” Part of the success is due to the microphone placement in the studio, paramount to recording that heavy feel of the strings. We also hear elements of “Because” (Abbey Road) sprinkled on top. Nice.
The lyrics are simple and wistful reflecting Lennon’s humanity; his tough veneer falling to the ground. “Now and Then” doesn’t have the notable Lennon angst that captured our hearts back in the day, but it isn’t too sentimental either. “If I make it through, it’s all because of you.” It’s no worse than “All my little plans and schemes, lost like some forgotten dreams, seems that all I was really doing, was waiting for you.”(Real Love)
Like the other tracks, McCartney had a real challenge finishing the song without Lennon. It wasn’t so much about getting permission, but what to do with it musically. The spell of that songwriting combination which produced “In My Life” was long since broken and McCartney tapped into his unlimited muse to finish it. The process took months and he did it in relative secrecy. Macca probably felt a little insecure about his work on this and needed a little reassurance from Starr and Giles Martin. My guess is that he and Starr didn’t want to take their fans for granted. They haven’t. Images of people queuing up to buy the single in London proved The Beatles still have the X factor.
So here we are, some thirty years later, and McCartney says he and Ringo are releasing “the last song by The Beatles.” Consider the finality of that statement for a moment. The last song by the biggest band in music history. Perhaps the dream is finally over for McCartney and Starr. I thought about this as I watched the 12-minute documentary. For me, there is a sense of finality about it all; that the Beatles have concluded their presentation and are inviting guests to join them for coffee and cake in the lobby.
But it’s not that simple. As writer Rob Sheffield points out in his excellent book, Dreaming The Beatles (Dey St. 2017), “Our Beatles [as realized by the fans] have outlasted theirs.” The release of “Now and Then” in 2023, some seventy plus years after they broke up, proves his point. He recently called it “a final masterpiece that the fans deserve.” (Rolling Stone)
McCartney and Starr, now entering their eighties, are handing the gift of The Beatles back to us, while granting themselves the chance to drop in every now and then.