The “Last” song with contributions from all four Beatles, made possible by new technology, finds its power in vulnerability and nostalgia.
“Now and Then,” released on Thursday, is billed by its label, Apple Corps, as “the last Beatles song.” It’s a lost-love song reconstructed from a piano-and-vocal demo that John Lennon recorded in the late 1970s, well after the Beatles broke up. Yoko Ono brought it and other Lennon demos to the surviving Beatles in 1994.
Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr began building an arrangement around Lennon’s recording in 1995, the year they released another posthumous song, “Free as a Bird,” on the compilation album “Anthology 1,” followed by “Real Love” on “Anthology 2” in 1996. “Now and Then” is also, inevitably, a marketing tool. It’s the previously unreleased material added to the expanded, remixed reissue of “The Beatles 1967-1970,” which arrives on Nov. 10 paired with an expanded, remixed version of “The Beatles 1962-1966.” Those two compilations are better known as the Blue and Red albums.
“Now and Then” was the remaining song the Beatles had worked on together, but McCartney has said that Harrison grew frustrated and dismissed it as “[expletive] rubbish.”