I WAS sufficiently intrigued by the preliminary hype to stay up late one night last week for a chance to listen to the latest, and supposedly last, Beatles song as soon as it was aired. Even on the first listen, it came across as underwhelming.
Perhaps the time isn’t right for that kind of frivolity. It’s nigh impossible to switch one’s focus away from the unfolding genocide in Gaza. A very different John Lennon song was subconsciously ringing in my ears: “We don’t care what flag you’re waving/ We don’t even want to know your name…/ We understand your paranoia/ But we don’t wanna play your game/ You think you’re cool and you know what you’re doing/ 666 is your name… And you still gotta swallow your pill/ As you slip and you slide down the hill/ On the blood of the people you kill/ Stop the killing (free the people now)”.
That’s ‘Bring on the Lucie (Freda People)’ from Lennon’s Mind Games album, released 50 years ago. And ‘Imagine’, from a couple of years earlier, is perhaps even more pertinent: “Imagine there’s no countries/ It isn’t hard to do/ Nothing to kill or die for/ And no religion too”.
‘I know it’s true/ It’s because of you/ And if I make it through/ It’s all because of you… Now and then/ I miss you’ doesn’t quite measure up. Lyrically, it’s even less impressive than the Beatles’ first single from 61 years ago, ‘Love Me Do’. But, recorded by a bunch of Liverpudlians barely into their 20s, at least that track boasted a freshness that cannot conceivably be replicated by a pair of octogenarians leaning on a couple of ghosts.
The world’s biggest pop band’s legacy did not require ‘closure’.
The surviving Beatles last went down this long and winding road in the mid-1990s, alongside the fascinating Anthology series of outtakes and unfinished songs. The archival material was embellished by two ‘new’ tracks, with the Threetles, as they were dubbed at the time, adding vocals and instrumentation to two Lennon songs from the late 1970s that he hadn’t bothered with for either his ‘comeback’ album, Double Fantasy — released weeks before he was assassinated — or its posthumous sequel, Milk and Honey.
Alongside the potentially inspiring ‘Free as a Bird’ and the relatively mundane ‘Real Love’ on the tape of demonstration recordings that Yoko Ono provided were another two tracks, ‘Now and Then’and ‘Grow Old With Me’. The latter, riffing off Robert Browning — “Grow old along with me/ The best is yet to be” — might have been a poignant choice, given Lennon’s demise at 40, but perhaps also a bit mawkish. It remained untested.
They briefly had a go at ‘Now and Then’, but George Harrison dismissed it as “rubbish”, and that was that. It remained in the vault, but Paul McCartney remained invested in the track, possibly because at the end of their last encounter in New York, Lennon had reputedly farewelled him with the words: “Think of me now and then, old friend.”
It isn’t clear whether Harrison — who succumbed to cancer 22 years ago — was referring to the lyrics or the quality of the recording. The latter, it turned out, could be remedied. A couple of years ago, the film director Peter Jackson trawled through the audiovisual footage of the Beatles recorded in 1969, and came up with the fascinating eight-hour documentary Get Back. The audio part often involved separating and enhancing the soundtrack with the aid of artificial intelligence.
Jackson had already provided McCartney with Lennon’s vocal from ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’ to duet with on his live outings, and just this week the director suggested there could me more where that came from. Let’s hope McCartney says no.
Back in the 1970s, when all four ex-Beatles were routinely queried about the prospect of a reunion, there was plenty of ambivalence in their responses. The possibility was never quite ruled out, but on one occasion McCartney quipped, “You can’t reheat a soufflé.” He was right, but couldn’t resist returning to the kitchen.
The unimpressive result has been greeted with plenty of gushing reviews, and Western media has been full of reports about young fans — alongside the baby boomers — lapping up the idea of a “new” Beatles song. That, frankly, hasn’t been possible since 1980, and everyone should get over it. The original canon is enough for younger fans to marvel at the Beatles’ incredibly innovative trajectory from 1963 to 1969, as reflected in both their original recordings and the more recent remixes and often redundant embellishments.
The pair of 1994-95 tracks never quite ended up being counted as bona fide Beatles songs, and no one can seriously consider ‘Now and Then’ as worthy of inclusion in the Fab Four canon. The band’s amazing saga was wrapped up nearly 55 years ago. Let’s leave it there.
Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2023
