2023-11-02 18:34:47
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr during the recording of “The Night that Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles” in Los Angeles on January 27, 2014. MARIO ANZUONI / REUTERS
In the fall of 1963, the Beatles had already won hearts in the United Kingdom with their fourth single, She Loves Yousoon relayed by I Want to Hold Your Hand. They lent a hand to their comrades The Rolling Stones, who in turn tried to break through, by ceding rock to them I Wanna Be Your Man. Sixty years later, in a vertigo of time, the two major groups of the “British Invasion” continue to occupy the discographic news. The Stones released on October 20 Hackney Diamonds, a 24th studio album featuring bassist Paul McCartney, 81 years old. Who, for his part, markets Now and Then on November 2 with the other survivor of the Fab Four, drummer Ringo Starr, two years his senior. By announcing it with the din of the fanfare of Sgt. Pepper as “probably the last Beatles song”.
The information is false since the Liverpool quartet broke up in 1970. And that “the last Beatles song”at least the one that brought John Lennon, George Harrison, John McCartney and Ringo Starr together in the studio for the final time is called I Want You (She’s So Heavy). It was August 20, 1969 for the mixing of this long obsessive blues which appears on the album Abbey Road. The anachronistic falsifications of McCartney and Starr, with the complicity of Yoko Ono, Lennon’s widow, will change nothing.
Now and Then is in fact the third attempt to present a composition by Lennon alone as a Beatles creation after their breakup. It cannot therefore be a title of the group, any more than would be Imagine or Woman. McCartney can well affirm that such an initiative would have received the approval of the deceased, there is nothing to indicate that the New York recluse had the intention of joining in any common project before his assassination, on December 8, 1980. Interviewed by the magazine Playboy shortly before his death, he responded ” No way ” to this hypothesis not “serious”.
Monsters de Frankenstein
In a 2021 BBC interview, McCartney blamed his former partner for the divorce. It’s quite possible, but why then not respect his wishes? Originally, Now and Then is one of four unfinished Lennon songs that Yoko Ono entrusted to McCartney in 1994 in order to finalize them by adding instruments. Two of them, Free as a Bird et Real Love, will be on the first two volumes of the series Anthology in 1995 and 1996.
With the help of George Harrison – who had nevertheless declared that “The Beatles wouldn’t get back together until John Lennon was dead” – and his friend Jeff Lynne (Electric Light Orchestra) for production. Recorded by Lennon on piano in 1977, Now and Then was quickly discarded at Harrison’s request due to its poor audio quality. Died in 2001, the guitarist is no longer there to veto. The technological defect could be overcome by isolating and cleaning the voice using Artificial Intelligence, an operation carried out by New Zealand director Peter Jackson, who used this process in his documentary series The Beatles : Get Back (2021).
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