Legendary rock band The Beatles are releasing new music over 50 years after their breakup.
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr teamed up to complete the group’s final unfinished track “Now and Then,” which will be released on Thursday, November 2. The tune was originally written by the late John Lennon and worked on by McCartney, Starr and the late George Harrison over the years.
“When we lost John, we knew that it was really over,” McCartney, 81, stated in an Instagram teaser video for the song’s release shared on Thursday, October 26. His words were followed by an audio clip of Harrison saying, “I was talking to Yoko [Ono] and she said, ‘Ah, I think I’ve got a tape of John.” (Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman in 1980 at age 40, while Harrison died of lung cancer in 2001 at age 58.)
After a phone call from McCartney, Starr, 83, joined his former bandmate to complete Lennon’s unfinished song. In the clip, Lennon’s son Sean Ono Lennon went on to state, “It’s the last song that my dad and Paul and George and Ringo will get to make together.” (Lennon shared his youngest son, now 48, with his wife Ono, 90. He was also father to Julian Lennon, whom he shared with ex-wife Cynthia Lennon.)
The teaser clip ended with McCartney sharing his appreciation for his fellow musicians by saying, “How lucky was I to have those men in my life?”
Ahead of the song’s release, a 12-minute documentary about the making of the song will premiere on the band’s YouTube channel on Wednesday, November 1, and will feature exclusive footage and commentary from the band members, Ono Lennon and filmmaker Peter Jackson. The track will also be featured on the new remastered versions of The Beatles’ Red and Blue albums, which will drop on Friday, November 10.
Earlier this year, McCartney told BBC Radio 4’s Today that he and Starr used artificial intelligence to “extricate” Lennon’s voice from his unreleased “Now and Then” demo.
The Beatles formally parted ways in 1974 after years of breakup rumors. Although many fans have speculated that Ono’s relationship with John led to the group’s disbandment, McCartney has previously said that was not the case. “[Yoko] certainly didn’t break the group up, the group was breaking up,” he said in a 2012 interview with David Frost.
He continued: “I don’t think you can blame her for anything. When Yoko came along, part of her attraction was her avant-garde side, her view of things, so she showed him another way to be, which was very attractive to him. So, it was time for John to leave, he was definitely going to leave.”
However, McCartney recently criticized Ono’s behavior during the band’s recording of 1968’s The Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album). He said Ono was “an interference in the workplace” and described her as something he and the other members “had to deal with” during the October 11 episode of his “McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” podcast.
“The idea [of] that was if John wanted this to happen, then it should happen, and there’s no reason why not,” McCartney continued. “We would allow this and not make a fuss. And yet, at the same time, I don’t think any of us particularly liked it.”
