A new song by The Beatles is coming soon.
“Now And Then” will be released on November 2, decades after the deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison. However, Lennon and Harrison will both be on the song with surviving bandmates Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, thanks to some technology magic.
The song began as a demo Lennon recorded in the late 1970s, according to a Thursday press release. Lennon sang and played piano on the demo, which his wife, Yoko Ono, sent to McCartney, Harrison and Starr years after Lennon was assassinated in 1980.
Two other demos she sent them were ultimately released in the mid-1990s as “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love,” featuring all four Beatles. McCartney, Harrison and Starr “completed a rough mix” of “Now And Then” at the time, the press release said, but the third song wasn’t released.
The idea of releasing it was revived about two decades after Harrison’s death, while McCartney and Starr were working with director Peter Jackson on the 2021 documentary series The Beatles: Get Back. After seeing how Jackson’s team used new technology to clean up old video and audio recordings for the series, they decided to test it out on Lennon’s old demo and on the guitar Harrison recorded for “Now And Then” back in 1995. When they discovered the technology would work, McCartney and Starr built on the song, adding new bass, guitar, piano, drums and backing vocals.
