“One, two, three, four! Well she was just seventeen, if you know what I mean!”

60 years after Paul McCartney counted us in to a world four working-class boys from Liverpool would change forevermore, on November 2nd, 2023, he did so one last time as a final farewell in the last record The Beatles will ever release: Now and Then.

In 1994, Yoko Ono gave Paul McCartney two tape cassettes containing demo recordings of John Lennon singing 4 unfinished songs: ‘Grow Old With Me’, ‘Free As a Bird’, ‘Real Love’ and ‘Now and Then’, recorded a couple of years before his tragic death in 1980. The tapes had “For Paul” scribbled on them in Lennon’s handwriting.

‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ were completed and released by the surviving three Beatles in 1995 as part of the Anthology series, but due to Lennon’s vocals being too obscured by the piano, after several days of recording a rough backing track, their work on ‘Now and Then’ was scrapped and forgotten, until now.

Peter Jackson (the director of the Lord of the Rings movies)’s production company WingNut Films used artificial intelligence to extricate Lennon’s vocals from the original demo, the late George Harrison’s recordings from the 90s were sampled and McCartney and Starr went back into the studio to record their new vocals.

Not quite happy with the use of AI in the song, some fans initially called the project dishonest and ‘not a true Beatles song’ when it was first announced. McCartney clarified in June 2023 that “nothing has been artificially or synthetically created. It's all real and we all play on it. We cleaned up some existing recordings – a process which has gone on for years.”

The song marked the band’s record-breaking return to No. 1 on the UK charts, becoming the country’s top single, as if it had been released at the height of Beatlemania in the early sixties instead of six decades later. They set two new records: coming back 60 years and six months after their first UK No. 1, “From Me To You,” in May 1963, beating Elvis Presley’s 47 years and six months and 54 years after their previous No. 1 hit, “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” in 1969 – overtaking Kate Bush’s 44-year gap between 1978 song “Wuthering Heights” and 2022 song “Running Up That Hill.”

John Lennon’s unique and timeless baritone accompanied by Paul McCartney’s aged tenor, singing the words “Now and then, I miss you.” would bring tears to the eyes of Beatles fans in any case, but it also carries additional depth as it perfectly parallels Lennon’s final words to McCartney before he passed: “Think about me every now and then, old friend.” When asked about whether he was the inspiration for the song, McCartney said “Some people think John was speaking directly to me [in Now and Then]. And you know what? That is very nice to think about, so I’ll stick with that interpretation.”

Peter Jackson contributed to the making of the short documentary and music video as well as the song itself. It can be argued that a lesser director than Jackson would have made the video morose and overwrought like an In Memoriam tribute that tried to be deep, but he let there be levity and cheekiness.  He focused on silliness and happiness at the core of the Fab Four themselves, making it infinitely more meaningful and beautiful.

Now and Then, The Beatles’ final bow, served as a way for younger fans get to experience the thrill of the phenomenon that is Beatlemania and for older fans to say “Hello, Goodbye” to the greatest musical love story that shaped the world as we know it.