The fact that rock fans are getting new content from The Beatles in 2023 is miraculous. Years after bringing new John Lennon recordings back into the world for the Anthology series, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have been working to bring the band’s trademark sound back into the public eye with the final release, ‘Now and Then’. Although many Beatles fans may have been crying tears of joy upon hearing the news, there are just as many questions surrounding how it was made.
While ‘Now and Then’ was initially being worked on during Anthology, it has since been brought back into the public consciousness through the help of AI. As opposed to hearing The Beatles “as nature intended” to borrow a phrase from the band, some of the heavy lifting for the song is coming from various algorithms pushing the quality of the audio to sound like a proper Fab Four recording.
In the recently released 12-minute film titled Now And Then – The Last Beatles Song, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Sean Ono Lennon, and Peter Jackson explain the technology they discovered while making the Get Back documentary. It was a breakthrough moment that allowed them to finally complete the recording of ‘Now and Then’.
During their previous attempts at making ‘Now and Then’, The Beatles aborted their plans due to technology issues. In Now And Then – The Last Beatles Song, Ringo reflected: “It really brought to the four, to the three of us that John’s gone.”
Meanwhile, McCartney says: “I think we kind of ran out of steam a bit and time. It was like, ‘Maybe we’ll leave this one’.” He also discusses the death of George Harrison in 2001 as another reason why it’s taken so long for the track to reach completion, noting how his passing “took the wind out of our sails”.
He adds: “It took us almost a quarter of a century to wait for the right moment to tackle ‘Now and Then’ again. With the technology that Peter Jackson and his team had worked out during the Get Back movie, he’d been able to separate off certain instruments and voices.”
Should AI be used for a Beatles song?
Even though new Beatles songs are rarely a bad thing, is there any sense in bringing new Beatles material to the forefront with the help of robotic assistance? Coming courtesy of director Peter Jackson, many artists have been vocal about their distaste for AI, thinking that it robs the music of its human essence. While that is a founded fear, this new version of the song may be the ultimate exception to the rule.
When first using the technology for The Beatles’ Get Back project for Disney+, the initial plan was for Jackson to use AI as a tool rather than any kind of assistance. While the original film lacked a lot of optimism because of the material that was left on the cutting room floor, the main focus Jackson put into his revamped version was to take the technology and clean up the sounds that were missing.
For instance, when working through the band’s various rehearsal tapes, many of the songs for the original film were made unusable because of how much mic bleed was on every single track. Thanks to the help of AI, though, those pieces could then be isolated, making for a much clearer stereo image that puts the listener in the same room as the band.
This is a fundamental piece of why ‘Now and Then’ came together in the first place. When working on the song in the 1990s, George Harrison was the one who backed away from finishing the song, thinking that the tape of John Lennon that was being used was too poor in quality to turn into an accurate Beatles record.
Jackson elaborates: “During the course of Get Back, we were paying a lot of attention to the technical restoration, which ultimately led us to develop a technology that allows us to take any soundtrack and split all the different components into separate tracks.”
Moreover, Ono Lennon said his father would have “loved” the idea of using Jackson’s equipment as he was “never shy to experiment with recording technology” and described the process of making the song as “really beautiful”.
How AI keeps everything Fab
Now, with the advent of new technology, fans can get to see the Fab Four interacting once again for what is slated to be the final time they play together. As Paul McCartney explained to BBC: “We had John’s voice and a piano, and he [Jackson] could separate them with AI. They tell the machine, ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar.’ So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles’ record, it was a demo that John had, and we were able to take John’s voice and get it pure”.
While there might be a ghostly feeling that permeates the song before it’s even out, The Beatles are looking to treat AI as a way for them to collaborate as old mates again rather than make a mockery of what the band’s sound used to be.
As the band prepare to release a new version of their greatest hits alongside the new song, the use of new technology is just another signal of the band being ahead of all their contemporaries. Even years after their breakup, The Beatles remain on the cusp of making landmark musical achievements that no one else has touched before.
