The Beatles
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives. All rights reserved.
The fact that a new Beatles single will be released again in 2023 is definitely a sensation. “Now And Then” was John Lennon’s unfinished song, which has now been completed by his friends and former bandmates – also with the help of AI. Paul McCartney produced “Now and Then” with Giles Martin. John Lennon’s original piano and vocal tracks, George Harrison’s guitar recordings from the Anthology Sessions from 1995 and Ringe Starr’s vocals and drum parts from 2022 were used. If British-American music producer Tony Visconti had had his way, the song would have been different in terms of the strings -Arrangements had even more power.
Tony Visconti claims: He could have done better
On Facebook The producer, who has worked with David Bowie and Paul McCartney among others, didn’t mince his words. He said: “I think it’s really great that the Beatles helped make this a very likeable single. However, I find the string composition boring. As the arranger for all the orchestral material on Band On The Run, I should have written the arrangement for this piece. Paul put me in BOTR because he liked the string arrangements I wrote for the T.Rex albums and singles.”
This is how “Now And Then” came about
“Now And Then” is a song by John Lennon – the musician recorded a demo of it shortly before his death. In the 1990s, Yoko Ono handed the recording over to Paul McCartney. In 1995 an effort was made to make another Beatles song out of the material. However, since Lennon’s voice could not be easily isolated from the demo, the idea was ultimately shelved. With today’s technology (which was already used in Peter Jackson’s eight-hour Beatles documentary “Get Back”), the vocal part could now be separated from the piano tones. What you hear is actually John Lennon – not a voice created by artificial intelligence.