Bittersweet Finale for the Fab Four’s Recording Career
Now and Then, which has been officially billed as “The Last Beatles Song,” is described as the legendary group’s “first new song in 50 years.”
It is a “new” in that all four members, including the late John Lennon and George Harrison, play and sing on a previously unreleased composition.
But it is not some long-lost “Abbey Road” outtake, and in reality even Lennon’s part was recorded and presumably written many years after the Beatles broke up.
“Now and Then” is similar to “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” the other two “new” Beatles songs to have been released since 1970. All are rough Lennon home demos recorded during the late 1970s and provided by his wife Yoko Ono in 1994 for the surviving members to complete.
The songs were intended for the three-volume “Beatles Anthology” outtakes collection released in 1995 and 1996.
The other two songs were completed and released on Vols. 1 and 2, but Vol. 3 was issued without one.
Although the surviving members at the time — Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Harrison, along with “Anthology” co-producer Jeff Lynne — recorded instrumental backings for “Now and Then,” they were unable to finish it satisfactorily due to Lennon’s piano drowning out his voice in places on the demo.
