The Beatles, New York, 1966
Photo: Getty Images, Santi Visalli. All rights reserved.
The Beatles are one of the most successful bands of all time. In their active decade they delivered one hit after another. Almost everyone can still sing along to “Here Comes The Sun” and “Let It Be”. Nevertheless, Ringo Starr apparently initially had his doubts about the band’s chances of survival and kept a very special backup plan in mind.
On the occasion of the final Beatles song “Now And Then”, the drummer and his bandmate Paul McCartney reminisce. “None of us thought it would last even a week,” Starr told The Sunday Times newspaper. “Paul wanted to write, I wanted to open a hair salon, George wanted to buy a car repair shop. But it continued and then it ended. And at the right time, I think. But that didn’t stop us from playing together,” the drummer explains.
McCartney also believed at the time that the band would only survive for ten years at most. In his opinion, that was “the maximum range for a rock’n’roll group” at the time anyway – and that’s what happened. In 1970, the four Beatles members went their separate ways. However, their music endured and is still listened to by younger generations today, which seems to surprise Ringo Starr: “How many streams did we do last year? One billion? Three billion? This blows my mind… The beat still goes on, you know?”
The song “Now And Then,” which was released on November 2nd, is based on a demo version that John Lennon recorded in his New York home in the 1970s. More than 40 years after the singer-songwriter’s death, the remaining band members completed the track using artificial intelligence. They isolated Lennon’s vocals from the background piano playing and completed it with bass, drums, strings and an additional passage from McCartney.
The work was released not only with an accompanying music video, directed by Peter Jackson, but also with a short documentary about the creation of the project. The song is on track to become the band’s 18th number one single.