The Final Beatles Song

Living at the time of a new Beatles song was something I never thought I would experience. Living during the time of any new Beatles release is hard to believe, as the last one had happened nearly thirty years ago, and before that another twenty. The Beatles finalized their breakup near fifty years ago, the papers dissolving The Beatles partnership were signed in 1974, yet here we are in 2023, listening to a new song.

Well, “new”. Now and Then was a widely known [and easy to find] demo from John Lennon, recorded during the 1970s. They attempted to clean up the recording in 1995 with producer Jeff Lynne to be included on The Beatles Anthology set, which had included two new songs [Free as A Bird and Real Love]. Now and Then was not able to make it on the anthology due to the poor quality of the demo, Lennon’s vocals sticking to the piano notes, yet The Beatles [Threetles] still worked on it, George Harrison adding a guitar to the song. In 2022, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, aided with modern technology, added drums, bass, backing vocals, and viola: a "new" Beatles song.

There’s been some discourse about the song, the main gripe coming from this idea that it isn’t really a Beatles song because it wasn’t a “genuine” collaboration between the four members. Well, I’d just like to say to people who think that: do you know anything about The Beatles?

This isn’t a collaboration between all four members, therefore not a Beatles song. Okay, so I suppose Yesterday, Within You Without You, and Here Comes the Sun, I Me Mine, Back in The U.S.S.R, AND Blackbird aren’t Beatles songs either. Half of McCartney’s songs feature not a single Beatle but McCartney on them, Lennon was a no-show for most of Harrison’s pieces, and Starr was often left out of recording sessions. Does the lack of all four Beatles here equate to these being any less Beatles songs? If anything, the fact all the Beatles are on a later era track is impressive. You have Lennon from the 1970s, Harrison for the 1990s, and Starr and McCartney doing recent work. That’s more collaboration than nearly anything on The White Album.

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I’ve been a fan of the band since I was about 11 years old. It’s an uneven love but it’s a love nonetheless. They’re the one thing I’ve loved the longest and never really gotten over, even if I do constantly put them down. I guess it’s very Two of Us: ‘you and I have memories / longer than the road that stretches up ahead’. It feels that once the band announces anything I’m reduced to tears: Get Back, IMAX screenings, covers of their music, Now and Then. I can’t say I didn’t cry both times I watched the short film attached to the new song, something about the realization that I’ll be alive for a Beatles release, the last one, was overtaking, even on top of it just being my tear trigger [The Beatles].

I guess I cried at the reminder Harrison is gone. How old McCartney and Starr really are now, in my head they’re constantly 25. How this is probably the last track we’ll hear Lennon on. I mean, this is one of the closest things we’ll get to the true end of The Beatles. I don’t think they’re done yet, Carnival of Light and countless other songs are known to be lost at the moment and will one day see the Now and Then treatment in distant years. But this is the end for right now, and it’s bittersweet.

If we must start again / Well, we will know for sure / That I will love you / Now and then / I miss you / Oh, now and then / I want you to be there for me

The song feels like an ending. References to the past and present, reminders of love, and even to starting again. It’s reminiscent of the final song recorded for Abbey Road, the final song recorded with all four Beatles together in the room, the one that ended their recording career with In the end / The love you take / Is equal to the love you make. No matter how many “last” Beatles songs there have been, there has always been a bit of a lesson about love thrown in there for good measure. It was Tom Petty who said all The Beatles did as a group was make people happy, and they got treated like shit in return. Even if they hated each other at points they were still hammering away at songs because it would make the public happy, their songs of love and harmony rank them as the greatest band of all time. They’ve ended three times with a song about love. The band who had members shot, stabbed, ridiculed, has tried to end on a note of love three times.

The B-Side to the single is gutting, a remaster of their first single with 1962s Love Me Do. The lush orchestral arrangement of Now and Then is followed by the immediately recognizable shriek of Lennon's harmonica. Today actually marks sixty years of that song's original single release, the beginning tied to the end. The remaster sounds great, most all Beatles remasters do because of the care put behind them, and this is no different. I think the choice of Love Me Do for the B-Side is beautiful, it's something that feels right like nothing else could've. It'll get near anyone whose ever half cared about The Beatles to shed a tear or two.

The Beatles aren’t my favorite band like they used to be. I don’t really know where they would rank if I were to write it all out. I prefer The Rolling Stones over them. I hate Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I’d venture to say I prefer most solo work over a majority of the band tracks. But I’m still seen as the girl who likes The Beatles. Even if someone knows nothing about me, I like The Beatles.

Listening to Magical Mystery Tour on the bus ride home in sixth grade. I was the one people would go up to in grade school to ask the members names. I had little magnets of the band in my locker for eighth grade to my senior year of high school, the four of With The Beatles parallel with the four Let It Be [though I did lose Let it Be John, and have no clue where With The Beatles George is]. My locker was also home to a small Union Jack printed tin with the band’s name imprinted over it that held my sticky notes and pens during high school. I would write about The Beatles when I could, even if one of my teachers tried to make that difficult on me. An attempt was made but I couldn’t not write about The Beatles. That teacher ruined a lot for me, but she couldn’t get rid of that band. She could consistently tell me she didn’t understand my [detailed] writings on the history of Wings or that she didn’t understand how I could like The Beatles if I hated John Lennon [because I guess questioning things a man in the public eye did that were objectively wrong is equatable to me basically being glad he died]. I mean, even when teachers didn’t really talk to me they knew I loved The Beatles [When a teacher brought his young daughter to school he told her immediately that I liked The Beatles too, even though I’d only ever talked about them as a reference point in research]. Like I said, no matter how little I talk about this band people will always turn around and tie them to me. It’s frustrating sometimes, but there are much worse bands to be attributed too. You really can’t take them away from me, even if I try.

Now I try to be nice about the band that opened up a lot of music for me, that is essentially my calling card in the eyes of so many people. I accept I’ll never really be over The Beatles. Maybe it’s that teenage girl in me, the one that cries seeing them like all the girls of Beatlemania. I feel content in being able to so openly cry over these men, it almost connects to the past in more ways than one. I’m just another in a long line of girls crying over a new Beatles single.

Then I was happy to discover the band that paved the way for every piece of music or media I indulged in after the fact.

It's hard to even really realize just what we experience today. For the first time in millions of lives The Beatles released a new song, sixty years after their debut. The implication this opens up, the worlds of possibility that now exists, everything about this release is historic. It'll be years before the full cultural impact this has will truly be seen, but man is it something to know that music history was made today, and so many got to experience The Beatles just like all those all those years ago.

Some things never change. The Beatles never really end. I’m just insanely happy that in some unimaginable way, the past two weeks have seen me live through a Rolling Stones album release and a Beatles single drop. Never in a million years will that ever feel real, yet here we are.

Now and Then really aren’t so different from each other after all.

Below is the documentary released prior to the release of Now and Then: The Final Beatles song. The song can be heard wherever you stream music.