Paul McCartney & John Lennon - Finishing "Now and Then"

I posted this in the thread Funny quotes from musicians.
but this seems like an appropriate place to re-post it

“I think John would have liked Free As A Bird. In fact, I hope somebody does this to all my crap demos when I’m dead, making them into hit songs."
- George Harrison

 

In a much more recent statement from Lynne, about the song, he talked about a couple overdubs, including a Ringo vocal on the track, in addition to Lennon.

 

I can't see John doing much to finish it.

 

As evidenced by Macca changing his song "I Wants To" to "I Will"

 

Do we know if it even got to the production stage....?

 

With a somewhat different texture as opposed to the very heavy handed plod of Jeff Lynne, FAAB would have been a major Beatle track had it been around in '67/,68. I pretty much feel the same about Real Love.

 

Is there a way to aggregate exactly how many Beatle threads are on this forum, and how many pages per thread. I bet the results would be staggering.

 

I want both!

 

At least 600 each if you search for threads with "beatles" or "lennon" or "mccartney" in the title alone, never mind searching for George or Ringo threads too. I'm assuming the forum software limits searches to 600 results, so there's no telling how many more there could be.

 

I'd thought that the third and last song was "Grow Old With Me", which didn't quite work for the Threetles but which George Martin "finished" for the Lennon box set by adding an orchestra. I've never heard of this track "Now and Then". So, were there really four songs the Threetles worked on, or am I mistaken about "Grow Old With Me"?

 

Congrats! I think “200 pages” has a chance to become a new forum cliche!

 

Actually far as we know, depending on your feeling about the Peter Hodgeson report, there are 5. Plus the 15-30 live threetle jams Blue Moon Kentucky etcetera.

The so called 5th song, if you believe the testimony, George & Paul wrote a song the Threetles recorded at the Mill in, either March or April 95 for 3 days. Called ALL FOR ❤ LOVE

 

That would be good and exciting!
I'd just ask for two things, no Lynne drum sound and for Paul to use his Hofner Bass on it if he hasn't already.

 

I think they should keep the demo material on the demo, and
1) have Paul finish writing the song and re-arrange it so that Ringo can sing lead
2) get Dhani, Sean and Julian involved in backing vocals and instrumentation

I don't think it's a good idea in this case to build the song on top of the recording John left.

 

I've always enjoyed the song.

I've always played with this idea in my head of Paul and Ringo finishing it in secret, then keeping it in the vault. Then once the last of them passes away, the final ever Beatles song is finally given away to the rest of the world the day after. Morbid, I know, but I've always found the song very moving so it'd probably be even more moving then. Certainly it'd get a looooot of attention.

I think they could finish the song, even with minimal input from George. Even though Paul's vocals are understandably old-sounding now, I think that could actually add quite a bit to the song given it's namesake. An old Paul with a young John. Now and Then. Have Paul and Ringo finish off the song together and add they respective parts.

As for George... well, I believe there was still one afternoon of some very basic recordings from George so they could use some of that. But they could still absolutely sample him from other projects just to get him on there. That fan mix above samples 'Because' quite wonderfully, for example. So you could probably get him in on the harmonies somewhere from some project regardless.

 

Even if only Paul and John are on the recording, it could be called "Beatles". No different lineup than "The Ballad of John and Yoko" and probably a couple White Album tracks.

But if George called the song "rubbish" then I won't hold my breath waiting to hear it.

 

Certain "supposedly" reliable people said they heard and witnessed "McCartney " work extensively on this track,, 6-8 years ago, some time frame like that.

 

Remember Paul talked about a new recut Let It Be movie for a loooong time, and lo and behold, the new Get Back (formally Let It Be) is about to come out. Sometimes these things do actually happen.

 

I would absolutely love to see this happen (and a reissue of the Anthology DVDs and CDs, with bonus material, would be the perfect excuse), but I'm sceptical. In fact, I'm surprised Paul's even still thinking about it. He's had more than 25 years to finish it, after all.

I'm not sure Ringo and Olivia would be happy putting something out that George didn't like. Especially if his contribution (if there is one) is minimal or disinterested. There's also the issue of Paul's modern-day vocals. Everything else you could work around, but without a decent Harrison lead guitar part and strong Macca (McCartney/Harrison) vocals, I'm not sure it would be worth putting out under The Beatles' banner. But I'd love to be proven wrong.

Please get Giles Martin to produce though, and not Jeff Lynne.

 

George was definitely not right he was just a grumpy old man who was forced into doing The Anthology due to personal finances .
He then had to get on board and actually do some work instead of just flying all over the world watching Grand Prix’s.
With Now and Then George would have had to a lot more work and put in some real effort and that was not what he was about .
George was about a Payday with minimal effort simple as that , hence his opinion should be ignored .

 

Sounds better then John these days

 

Just drape it in Jeff Lynne 80s drums and be done with it. Electric Light Beatles.

 

Just let Paul & Ringo do it, and then somebody can 'accidentally' leak it if Olivia objects

 

From the BBC documentary from 2012 Mr. Blue Sky: "The Story of Jeff Lynne". Skip to 8:10.