Now and then, the Beatles live forever!

After a wait of over four decades, the last Beatles song Now and Then has been finally released, and it is already bringing back a lot of sweet memories to all those who grew up listening to the ‘Fab Four’. The song was originally written by John Lennon, but it is thanks to the efforts of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr (the surviving members of Beatles) that fans can listen to it now.
In memory of The Beatles' iconic visit to India
Rishikesh, where the band spent over a month meditating and writing songs in 1968, was chosen for the official song launch here in honour of the legendary band. At the launch, the documentary Now And Then - The Last Beatles Song was also screened at the iconic Beatles Cafe in Rishikesh.
In the 12-minute documentary, Ringo and Paul, along with Sean Ono Lennon (John's son) and Peter Jackson (the director of the song's video), talk about the making of Now And Then and how technology helped them come up with the last Beatles song. The documentary, directed by Oliver Murray, also features exclusive footage of the time when the band was actively performing and creating music.

Reworking John Lennon’s original song
The story of Now And Then began in the late 1970s when John recorded a demo with vocals and piano at his home in New York’s Dakota Building. In 1994, his wife, Yoko Ono Lennon, gave the recording to Paul, George and Ringo, along with John’s demos for Free As A Bird and Real Love, which were both completed as new Beatles songs and respectively released as singles in 1995 and 1996, as part of The Beatles Anthology project. At the same time, Paul, George and Ringo also recorded new parts and completed a rough mix for Now And Then with producer Jeff Lynne. At that point, technological limitations prevented John’s vocals and piano from being separated to achieve the clear, unclouded mix needed to finish the song. Now And Then looked like a canned project back then. But after the release of the docuseries The Beatles: Get Back, Peter Jackson (director of the docuseries) and his team de-mixed the film’s mono soundtrack, managing to isolate instruments and vocals and all the individual voices within The Beatles conversations. This opened the way to 2022’s new mix of Revolver, sourced directly from the four-track master tapes, and the same technique was applied to John’s original home recording, preserving the clarity of his original vocal performance by separating it from the piano. In 2022, Paul and Ringo started working on completing Now and Then.


"There it was, John’s voice, crystal clear. It’s quite emotional. And we all play on it, it’s a genuine Beatles recording. In 2023, to still be working on Beatles music and about to release a new song the public hasn’t heard, I think it’s an exciting thing," said Paul McCartney. Ringo Starr added, "It was the closest we’d ever come to having him back in the room, so it was very emotional for all of us. It was like John was there, you know. It’s far out."
"It was incredibly touching to hear them working together after all the years that Dad had been gone. It’s the last song my dad, Paul, George and Ringo got to make together," said Sean Ono Lennon.
The song’s music video with some unseen footage of the band members was also released on November 3.
The music video has been directed by Peter Jackson, who says, “We wanted the short film to bring a few tears to the eye, but generating emotion using only archive footage is a tricky thing. Fortunately, the simple power of this beautiful song did a lot of the work for us, and we finished the first 30 or 40 secs of the film fairly quickly. Luckily we found a collection of unseen outtakes in the vault, where The Beatles are relaxed, funny and rather candid. These become the spine of our middle section, and we wove the humour into some footage shot in 2023.”