Sixty years after the Beatles released their first single, the infamous band has dropped their final track. ‘Now and Then’, originally a five-minute piano solo demo recorded by John Lennon, was released earlier this month, on November 2nd. With today’s fascinating technological advancements, remaining band members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were able to use artificial intelligence to isolate Lennon’s vocals from the noisy tape and include George Harrison’s guitar tracks.
In 1995 Harrison, McCartney and Star did attempt to finish the song as they reunited to work on new songs that would be released on the band’s Anthology albums.
They were able to successfully complete ‘Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” as they layered new arrangements over Lennon’s old demos. They attempted to do the same with ‘Now and Then’, but they were unable due to poor sound quality.
Progress and development on this song eventually stopped as McCartney said in a mini documentary that “John’s demo tape the piano was a little hard to hear.
And in those days, of course, we didn’t have the technology to do the separation”. After Harrison’s death in 2001, there was further doubt that song would ever be released. However, artificial intelligence has been able to fix this.
Thanks to director Peter Jackson and his team, a technology was developed that enabled them to take any musical piece, including age-old demos and separate the various components based on machine learning.
This technology was created earlier this decade when Jackson was working on his Get Back documentary for Disney Plus. McCartney and Starr saw this as their chance to “make a proper record” of ‘Now and Then’.
Alongside Lennon’s vocals and Harrison’s guitar tracks, producer Giles Martin composed a string arrangement similar to what his father (Sir George Martin) “would’ve done in the old days”. Then Martin, McCartney, and Starr’s recordings from earlier this year were all added to complete the song.
The song was released with the band’s first single ‘Love Me Do’ as a B-side. McCartney stated in an interview that “John’s voice [is] crystal clear. It’s quite emotional. And we all play on it, it’s a genuine Beatle’s recording.”
Despite some anxiety and discomfort from fans, everyone who was involved with the project is fully comfortable with how ‘Now and Then’ came together.
Suffice it to say that without AI this ultimate Beatles track would have remained hidden in the Then, never to be heard Now.