The Fab 4 from the Ed Sullivan Show have done it again! The long awaited song “Now and Then” has now been released, with a music video released the day after. This will be the last song that all four Beatles play on together.

But wait, how did all four Beatles work on it if John Lennon died in 1980 and George Harrison died in 2001?

Back in 1977, John Lennon recorded a few solo songs on a cassette with a guitar. Sadly, these songs never made it into the light after he was killed on December 8, 1980 by a lone gunman.

Years later, Yoko Ono (John’s wife, now widow) gave the remaining three Beatles the cassettes he recorded and asked them to finish the songs for John and release them to the public. This is what was on the Beatles Anthology in 1995, with the 2 of the songs released, those being Real Love and Free as a Bird.

The only problem with the last song was that John’s voice wasn’t quite good enough to take out of the recording since the guitar part was in the way of the vocal. Back in the 70’s, 80’s, and even the 90’s, you couldn’t separate different tracks of a song like you can with modern music programs today.

So the group recorded a “backing track” (a music track without vocals) to the single and put it on the back burner until technology could one day do what they needed it to. Then in 2001, George Harrison passed away due to lung cancer and the song was left to sit and collect dust for even longer.

The way the song was eventually completed was, of course, through AI. They used artificial intelligence to separate John’s voice from the guitar and polish it to make it sound clear enough to use as a lead vocal. And since they had recorded the backing track to the song in 1995, they had George Harrison’s guitar to put into the song as well. The only thing left was for Ringo and Paul to add their parts and BAM!! The last Beatles song was finished. It was released on November 2 with the music video releasing the next day. 

Here’s the link to the song and music video on the official Beatles YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opxhh9Oh3rg

RIP John Lennon- December 8, 1980

RIP George Harrison- November 29, 2001