'Now and Then' Is the 'Bloody Beatles' and That's Enough

The Beatles are back with a new song. 

And I am happy about it. I feel young and hopeful at a scary time, as The Beatles did in the 1960s, when the world was on fire and the Vietnam War raged on and on.

I can escape with The Beatles.

Music publisher Dick James, who started working with John and Paul in 1962, once put it so well. He said The Beatles were "the perfect entertainment machine."

The just-released "Now and Then," billed as The Beatles' last song, will probably raise more questions than answers. Is this a true Beatles song? Is it a triumph or a gimmick? What would John Lennon have thought? Why does this project mean so much to Paul McCartney?

"Now and Then" is unmistakably John, Paul, George and Ringo. The song sounds a bit somber in the beginning. No, it doesn't rock like, say, "Glass Onion." Yes, it lacks the mad experimentation of "Happiness Is a Warm Gun," too. And it is fair to say that Lennon's voice is not as distinctive as it was on "Come Together."

It will be a matter of personal taste whether someone embraces the song or waves it away.

Is it even fair to invoke the titles of Beatles' classics? Probably not. But people will do that, just the same. As a Washington Post headline summed up: "The 'new' Beatles song is perfectly fine. That's not good enough."

McCartney, for his part, bristles at the notion that some form of artificial intelligence accounts for the creation of "Now and Then." He told The Guardian: "To be clear, 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."

Nevertheless, some people will dismiss "Now and Then" as some sort of a 21st century gimmick. They'll call it a product of "Get Back" director Peter Jackson, whose technology provided the impetus for the song's creation, pushing a few buttons on a space-age, state-of-the-art console. This seems grossly unfair. 

Others will prefer to gush about the miraculous modern technology that allowed Paul McCartney and Peter Jackson to breathe life into a Lennon home recording that was unusable on its own.

The Beatles Nation is ecstatic at the prospect of any sort of new Beatles offering, flaws and all. Consider the joyful reaction of Melanie Formosa, a 22-year-old disc jockey on Long Island and a total Beatle freak: "I am thrilled that 'Now and Then' will finally be released. It's wonderful that artificial intelligence is able to help make that happen. I don't see it as a technological gimmick at all. Artificial intelligence was used to clean up existing recordings, which has been done time and time again."

Me? I've gone on record on Next Avenue as — harrumph! — declaring that The Beatles should not have bothered to recue this recording from the junk heap and should have instead, get ready for it, let it be.

Then I heard the song played a few weeks ago in a private Apple screening room on a spectacular sound system. Voila! It was definitely The Beatles, again. 

There is a lesson there, folks. Listen before you leap.

I can't help but wonder why Paul took such pains and so much time — he first proposed putting out "Now and Then" three decades ago — to unearth Lennon's homemade song.

Paul doesn't need the money. He also doesn't need to have to deal with carping from critics that the song is a gimmick, and not even a great one at that. Paul can live without knowing haters are griping that he has cheapened the Beatles legacy.

I wonder if McCartney has a need to remind people that The Beatles were the kingpins of the 1960s. 

The Rolling Stones' new album, "Hackney Diamonds," is their first release in 18 years. McCartney plays bass guitar on one track. The Stones have been getting almost unanimous critical praise for the new work.

And Bob Dylan is back on the road and getting excellent reviews for performing selections from his 2020 "Rough and Rowdy Ways" album. The critics lavished praise on it, reaffirming Dylan's place in popular culture.

You couldn't blame Paul McCartney for wanting us to re-experience The Beatles. I think he deserves credit for persisting through all these years.

It's a great parlor game to guess what Lennon would have thought about the fuss over "Now and Then." Lennon was notoriously competitive with McCartney. Don't forget that John dismissed Paul's early solo work in a ditty entitled "How Do You Sleep?" John sang: "The sound you make is muzak to my ears/You must've learned something in all those years."

Lennon might have pointed out that he thought so little of the throwaway "Now and Then" that he didn't bother to record it properly and include the song on 1980's "Double Fantasy," his first album release in five years. For the record, "Now and Then" also did not appear on the lovingly crafted "Lennon Anthology" album, a four-CD production which included outtakes from all of Lennon's solo periods.

Harrison, who died in 2001, went on record in a 1987 radio interview with Mary Turner, stressing that when The Beatles slaved away in the recording studio, they relied on "the natural human element."

"The problem is, there's a lack of discretion," Harrison suggested to Turner. "We invented a lot of the gimmicks. Now you can … press a button and get the sound that we spent months trying to invent back in the Sixties."

The reason that "Now and Then" has languished was that Harrison vetoed putting it out in the 1990s because he thought it was a sub-par and unworthy Beatles song. 

And in the end … does it even matter if the public thinks the song is more of a triumph of effects than a coup? I bet I know what McCartney would tell the critics.

It reminds me of what Paul succinctly said on "The Beatles Anthology."He answered the naysayers who had complained that The Beatles' 1968 "White Album," a two-record set that contained 30 songs of a dizzying variety of styles, proved to be unwieldy. 

Paul said: "It was great. It sold. It's the bloody Beatles' White Album. Shut up."

"Now and Then" is John singing and Paul and George and Ringo playing on it. In 2023, no less.

It's the bloody Beatles. 

Shut up.