(Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The world can hear one final Beatles song. On Thursday, the legendary band released their last new tune, “Now And Then,” which was developed with the help of an AI program.
The song is now streaming, and as you’ll hear, Beatles member John Lennon’s voice sounds fully revived as he sings about trying to win back a lost lover.
Lennon actually recorded “Now and Then” as a demo, featuring his voice and piano-playing, before his death over 40 years ago. In 1994, the cassette tape of the track was then passed to the remaining Beatles members, who had originally wanted to build a full song off the demo. But the audio’s poor quality derailed the effort, with Beatles member George Harrison reportedly calling the tune “rubbish.”
In a documentary the band released yesterday about “Now and Then,” Beatles member Paul McCartney recalls the resistance to finishing the song. “Wait a minute,” McCartney remembers thinking. “Let’s say I had a chance to ask John, ‘Hey John, would you like us to finish this last song of yours?’ I’m telling you, I know the answer would have been: ‘Yeah.’ He would have loved that,” McCartney says.
The documentary also shows footage from the mid-1990s of the band trying to record a song with the demo. But at the time, the band didn’t possess the technology to separate Lennon’s voice from the piano-playing, resulting in some distortion. “When we started ‘Now and Then,’ John was sort of hidden in a way,” Beatles band member Ringo Starr recalls.
“Every time we wanted a little bit more of John’s voice, this piano came through and clouded the picture,” McCartney added. So the group abandoned the project. In 2001, Harrison then passed away, making it seem like “Now and Then” would never be completed.
That changed in 2022. A year before, director Peter Jackson had released the documentary The Beatles: Get Back, which featured old footage of the band’s rehearsals from 1969.
To improve the footage’s audio, Jackson used a “machine learning system” that can seemingly learn to replicate the sounds of an instrument or a voice. The result was able to de-mix the mono soundtrack of the original footage, separating the individual voices and instruments for a clearer quality.
(Credit: The Beatles)“We thought, well we better send John’s voice to them off the original cassette,” McCartney said. “And there it was, John’s voice, crystal clear.”
“So in the mix, we could lift John’s voice, without lifting the piano, which had always been one of the problems” he added. “Now we could mix it and make a proper record.”
To finish the song, McCartney recorded bass, guitar and piano, while Starr added a new drum part. Electric and acoustic guitar tracks that Harrison recorded back in 1995 was able to complete the song, ensuring all members had made a contribution. “Wow, this is it, now it’s a Beatles record,” McCartney said.