Now And Then

Composer
John Lennon Beatles version by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr

Released on "Now And Then" single, The Beatles 1967-1970 [2023 edition] album

Recording Sessions

John's home, New York, USA - circa 1980
Mill Studios, Sussex, England - February 11 to early March, June 22, 1994; February 7, March 20 and 21, 1995; 2021-2022 (February 2, 2021 (McCartney's guitar solo), July 9, 2021 (McCartney's bass lines), July 12, 2021 (McCartney's vocals), April 9, 2022 (Starr's drums))
Capitol, Roccabella West, Los Angeles, USA - May 1, 2022 (orchestra section)
Abbey Road Studios, London, England - 2022

Working Titles

Now And Then, Miss You

Notes

This is one of the demos given to Paul by Yoko. The remaining Beatles started working on this song around the time when working on "Free As A Bird" started.

As co-producer Jeff Lynne recalled, "The song had a chorus but is almost totally lacking in verses. We did the backing track, a rough go that we didn't really finish. It was a bluesy sort of ballad, I suppose, in A minor. It was a very sweet song. I like it a lot. Should it ever be completed it would probably end up as either 'Now And Then' or 'Miss You'. I wish we could have finished it."

However, the recording on this song was not as smooth as "Free As A Bird". They once aborted a session on this song because it did not work out right. Finally, on the last recording sessions of this song, the three Beatles shelved the worked number . As Neil Aspinall commented on this song, "The song has been partly recorded in 'embryonic form' before it got put on the back burner, and that's where it stayed. The song was never intended to be released."

The reason why the three Beatles bothered to record it in the first place was unknown, and the song is never released.

Until in 2021.

In 2021, Peter Jackson has finished directing the docuseries The Beatles: Get Back using the original audio and video recordings from Let It Be sessions and the 1970 documentary film of the same name by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. The audio restoration of the series makes use of machine learning module called HAL (named after the Beatles' former road manager Mal Evans, and as a pun to HAL 9000 of 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Peter Jackson's production company WingNut Films is tasked with the audio restoration of the song. WingNut applied the same technique to Lennon's home recording of "Now and Then", while preserving the clarity of his vocal performance separated from the piano. The studio worked on a digital copy of the original tape provided by Sean Lennon, which was of much better quality than the third-generation copy that the three surviving Beatles had used in 1995. Lennon's vocals were isolated from his solo piano demo, which finally allowed the song to be finished. McCartney recorded bass guitar, a slide guitar solo in the style of Harrison as a tribute to him, electric harpsichord, backing vocals, and piano in the style of Lennon's demo in his home studio in East Sussex while Starr later recorded a finalized drum track and backing vocals in his home studio in Los Angeles. Additionally, Harrison's guitar parts (both acoustic and electric) from the 1995 sessions were inserted into the song.

The restoration was followed by the addition of a string section written by McCartney, Giles Martin (the son of Beatles' former producer and longtime collaborator George Martin), and Ben Foster, recorded at Capitol Studios. The piece was given the decoy name of "Give & Take" to avoid leaks from the musicians and recorded during late April 2022. Finally, McCartney and Martin added portions of original vocal recordings of "Here, There And Everywhere", "Eleanor Rigby" (both from Revolver), and "Because" (from Abbey Road) into the new song, following the methods used for the 2006 remix album Love.

The song is finally released as The Last Beatles Song on November 2, 2023, with a new 2023 stereo remix of "Love Me Do" as b-side.