NOW AND THEN EP
2. Real Love
4. Now And Then
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Here's an EP of the Beatles' reunion songs, the first installment in a little series on the band that I've been working on. In 1980, rythm guitarist John Lennon compiled a cassette of four home demos, all compositions from his years on paternity leave from the music business. He labelled this cassette For Paul, referring to bassist Paul McCartney, Lennon's former bandmate. A reunion of the quartet (following their messy and highly publicized breakup a decade prior) had been much-demanded by the public, and it would seem that Lennon was about to make the first steps toward such a thing. But then he got murdered. Roughly a decade later his widow, Yoko Ono, showed other members of his former band this cassette, and they agreed to put aside their differences (and massive egos) and get down in a studio together to finish them. This was quite difficult with the technology of the early 1990s, but with the help of the likes of Jeff Lynne, they managed to finish and release two of them ("Free As A Bird" and "Real Love"), building them up from unfinished low-fidelity demos into polished, finished songs while still keeping Lennon's musical parts intact. To media frenzy, the songs were released as singles from their big archival project of the time called Anthology (I actually have both CD singles; they come with a few rare and exclusive tracks).
But what of the other two songs? "Grow Old With Me" had actually been released already on the John Lennon/Yoko Ono collaboration album Milk And Honey (1984) in the form of a raw home demo, with Ono's song that inspired it, the even better "Let Me Count The Ways," appearing in the same form. Had they been able to record Milk And Honey together as planned in January 1981, "Grow Old With Me" was to receive a sweeping orchestral arrangement and all that sort of stuff. But a demo it was left, and a demo it remained. In the late 1990s, for the John Lennon Anthology (I wonder what could have inspired that release), the former Beatles producer George Martin scored an orchestral arrangement for the demo, and his song Giles added a bass part. That version is very nice, but doesn't feel much like a Beatles song at all. While recording his solo album What's My Name (2019), drummer Ringo Starr decided to cover the song and got McCartney (the only other surviving Beatle besides their long-kicked-out drummer Pete Best) to do bass and backing vocals on the track. It too received an orchestral score, this time by Jack Douglas, who had produced Lennon and Ono's comeback album Double Fantasy (1980), released three weeks before his killing. Douglas apparently quotes a melody line from a sing written by lead guitarist George Harrison called "Here Comes The Sun," maybe just so that in interviews Ringo could say, yet again, that "the four of us are all in there." Another classic rock grandpa, Joe Walsh, plays guitar on it too. It's not quite a Beatles song, but, (A) it wouldn't be the first Beatles track with a guest guitarist, (B) there are lots of Beatles songs without all four of them present, (C) it makes sense to have just one song with only the surviving members, and (D) it really fits in sonically with the rest of the songs.
The artwork for the "Free As A Bird" single. It was my third choice for the
cover art, after the front and back covers of the "Now And Then" single.
Moving on, the other song "Now And Then" was worked on a bit during those 1990s sessions, but for one reason or another didn't come anywhere close to completion. Less than a decade later, George Harrison died of cancer: two down, two to go. It seemed the song might never get finished, but in the 2020s Paul McCartney decided at long last to complete it himself, playing a number of instruments and getting Starr in for drums and percussion. Technological development in the audio restoration department allowed for Lennon's voice to be recovered in far clearer form, some guitar parts Harrison laid down in the 1990s were recovered, and a string section (arranged by Giles Martin in the style of his father) was added atop those in 2022; some old 1960s backing vocals of the four Beatles singing were even thrown in to fill out the track. At last the song was finished, and it got released the following year. I first heard it coming out of some workmen's radio as they were fixing the balconies on my apartment building. Seems oddly fitting. It took me a bit, but I did eventually manage to get a bit emotional about the song (I was, after all, pretty obsessed with the band in high school), and cried to the video. The fact that McCartney decided to finish the song after all these years really touched me; he didn't need the money or anything like that; he just loved his old, long-gone friend enough to do it. So it seemed to me at least. But always.
For this EP, I sourced "Grow Old With Me" and "Now And Then" from their standard 2019 and 2023 releases, respectively. "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love," though, are not the original single versions, which sound quite different from those more recent recordings. Giles Martin, who I mentioned already, took up the mantle from his father in some ways and has been having a successful career as of late remixing music by classic rock acts such as you-know-who and their contemporaries the Rolling Stones (who also released an album in 2023, which is just insane) and the Beach Boys, among others. Although some fans are up in arms about his remixes of the Beatles albums, I appreciate them for the far higher fidelity of the instruments. Not all remixes are good, but his really are. He's good at his job, and in my opinion, all the complaining fans are entitled pedants. Giles Martin's first Beatles remix project (besides a mid-2000s mashup album) was for a reissue of the bestselling hits compilation 1 (2000), which was also expanded into a music video collection called 1+ (2015). Some songs were remixed but remained exclusive to the music video audio tracks, and two of those songs were "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love." These remixes restored Lennon's parts much better than was possible in the 1990s and stripped back the layers of Jeff Lynne's signature (but very dad-rockian) production style. I prefer them to the originals, and they have a much similar (i.e., high level of) fidelity compared to the other two songs on the EP. All of the tracks on here actually received music videos (or at least a lyric video for "Grow Old With Me"), so I decided to link those in the tracklist so that it can be something of an audiovisual experience. Although being far from inventive, I do find the four songs quite pleasant (as far as old men making rock music goes, at least).
Happy listening, and tell me what you think of it below!
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