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

Call it “The best of the best, without Best”

 

I posted a pic from the same sessions where both Ringo and George are holding cameras.
It might be unthread or in the Upcoming Beatles thread.


later… found it

https://i0.wp.com/webgrafikk.com/bl...-Hanley-exhibition-4.jpg?resize=600,405&ssl=1

 

Wasn’t there some talk about George and Neil Aspinal approaching Yoko?

 

I’d to love to hear the sessions. I mean, it can’t be worse than A Toot And A Snore.

 

Nothing can be worse that "A Toot and a Snore"

 

Well Balzac you & agree 100% on the last paragraph-lots more of the 1994 Friar Park Jam---"In the eventually Blu-ray release.

The paragraph before that, about recording quality, the Anthology film crew etc...I would remind all of us, Jeff Lynne had either 1 or 2 24trk 2 inch machines going.

Also that reportedly: they spent several hours jamming & recording onto the 2 inch 24trks. Going over between 20 & 30 of the oldies, in similar fashion to what we see & hear, as they busk through Blue Moon Of Kentucky, Baby What You Want Me To Do & Thinking of Linking. One of the other songs is Ringo singing Love Me Do.

Jeff Lynne supposedly plugs in as the 4th musician for a large unseen portion of the Friar Park Jam. Which indicates to me-combined with the 2, 24 track 2 inch machines. & knowing in addition to Jeff Lynne, either Geoff Emerick or Marc Mann ( a good engineer ) was on hand..

I've always thought chances are a few live in studio at Friar Park takes of usable oldies were recorded. Maybe as a 4 piece with Lynne on Bass or guitar ( allowing Paul to switch ) maybe even unbeknownst to us, edited into form, maybe a few flub fixes, with punch in's, even a live or slightly corrected vocal, or a solo.

If, big if, I'm correct, I feel cheated, I sure would love hypothetically, say a fairly tight-mostly live-say a 2.20 two minute 20 second take of Ringo singing Love Me Do ( which did happen that day. Or George & Paul doing That'll Be The Day or Chuck Berry.

Maybe Lynne played rhythm sang a middle part, so Macca could play bass, & they nailed just or two. Maybe just fixing a few flubbed notes, maybe just 1 or 2 overdubs, say a solo or backround vocals or handicaps or whatever.

Do I think it's in archives, probably yes..imo

Why does it matter ?......well because it gives us a bside or quality bonus.. it gives us a bside for Now & Then, gives us at least a 4th viable legitimate reunion track....or for those of us that truly believe " All Those Years Ago " is a legit reunion track...a total of 5 studio reunion tracks.. Or maybe 6 or 7 depending.


If I one day play the grand kids, or younger music friend, some Beatles, or have someone that's learned & listened to enough. They Know Sgt Pepper, Rubber Soul, White album, the difference between John, George, & Paul.

That person eventually wants to know about the one brief reunion, Anthology period, when I go to play that one, I hope it has at least 4-5 tracks, & at least one or two lead vocals & songs, besides just John Lennon. At least there is an ending of sorts. Now & Then will help some, & everybody & their Grandmother knows, Paul will sing sections of Now & Then, giving more of a John & Paul vibe.

 

Only A Toot and a Snore Special Edition could be worse.

 

Regarding the June 1994 Friar Park jam session, I'm sure a bunch more footage exists. They shot joint interviews on the same day as well as we know.

I want all the footage. But I don't think we'll ever get it. Some additional select highlights are probably the most we'll see. First of all, while fans have debated this for years, I think it's pretty obvious that there's some weirdness/tension between Paul and George in the footage we've seen. Since you'd think what they *did* release would be some of the best bits, you have to wonder how fraught or tense or weird it got in some of the other footage.

It's always been a bit vague how much Jeff Lynne actually joined in the jamming, but I suspect if he did, none of that footage would be used. I think, while Paul likes Jeff Lynne, he finds "Beatles" stuff to be a kind of precious thing. He even spoke in interviews about how George had to talk him (Paul) into letting Jeff make a tiny cameo on "Free As A Bird" and/or "Real Love." So as much as I'd love to see it, I don't envision a "Beatles" product containing jams with Jeff essentially "filling in" for John.

Regarding who engineered that June 1994 session, I'm not sure, but I doubt it was Marc Mann. Marc Mann was brought in by Jeff to do digital pre-production work at the very end of 1994 for "Real Love" and "Now and Then", and as far as I know Mann never attended any sessions in the UK with the other Beatles.

I'm not sure those Friar Park jams needed any extensive "engineer" work; they were essentially recording a simple, three-piece live performance for film cameras. I don't think there was any intention to put any of it on an actual record. As it was, they ended initially using *none* of the jam session footage in the actual Anthology documentary (only the joint ukulele interview appearing briefly), weirdly serviced a *one-minute* clip of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" from the jam sessions to media outlets in 1996 despite not including it on the actual Anthology documentary (infamously being aired once on Good Morning America in 1996 where most fans missed it), and issuing a few more minutes of it in 2003 on the "Anthology" DVD.

Though, for trivia buffs, it should be noted that technically a couple seconds of the jam session footage appears in the "Anthology" during the bit where they're playing "Love Me Do" and they cut away to a 90s Ringo drumming. They apparently toyed with doing this sort of thing and eventually dropped it, but not before also doing the same thing with a few seconds of Paul and George during the 1995 "Real Love" sessions doing the "cha-cha boom" bit for "Besame Mucho".

 

I watched Anthology not so long ago and Paul and George (then present day) going CHA CHA BOOM made me laugh so hard for some reason. So random.

 

Call it - “You wanted the best you got the Best”.

 

More Toot, More Snore

 

If a new EPK is put together for Now and Then, maybe we will get more video clips of Paul, George and Ringo from this jam or other footage from making FAAB and RL that did not make it into the RL video. Something like that + Giles and Paul with the string section being recorded in 2023 will definitely help tell the story of the song's creation... I don't have high hopes for music from this being released, but I kind of think we may see some video clips and pictures from the 90s sessions and jams that we haven't seen before.

Basically, I'm hoping we get 3 things with N&T, too much to ask?

1) EPK/mini-doc (with new interviews, 90s and 2023 behind-the-scenes video, 70s pics and film of John)
2) Artfully made music video.
3) Stand-alone single w/b-side.

 

That looks like a reasonable request. I'll get my guys to work on it immediately ...

 

I suspect it's very possible we'll get at least a tiny bit of 1994/1995 reunion studio footage amidst the promotion for "Now and Then", if only to "prove" that George is on the record. Would be nice to get *a lot* of it. But probably not. And the cynical view would be that they could easily pull the old footage we already have to use for promoting "Now and Then".

 

Did anyone get the "A Toot and a Snore" ATMOS edition yet? The openness and soundstage are brilliant! The release of the year.

 

If a B-Side is a possibility, I’d love for Giles to give us a “LOVE”-styled, "kitchen sink & all" mash-up remix of N&T on side 2. Of course, based on what Penn Jillette has said, at least some (“Because” harmonies) of these archive elements are already present in the song’s final mix. Time will tell if this was a correct observation or not.

 

Yeah that's a good point. I just think context is always important. I hope people get the story of N&T, because to me the story is so compelling. This isn't just a lost song, it's been a passion project for Paul for a long time, with many twists and turns...

I'm sure some will not know and assume its some 60s recording that Paul and Ringo finished off recently. But I hope it's detailed and talked about how it's a 70s demo, worked on in the 90s and finished now, etc. Definitely showing the Threetles in the 90s would help explain the narrative of this song. And ironically, all of this plays into the theme and title of Now and Then.

 

Yeah, I'm all for providing all that context for fans and for people who are willing to learn it. But of course, judging by how the media (and the public) ran so quickly with incorrect info about "a fake John Lennon AI voice" a few months ago, I don't have a lot of faith that a ton of people will learn the context of this song.

But I think Apple and Paul/Ringo, etc. are going to hammer on a few key points: It's John's real voice, not a fake AI voice (thanks to Paul's initial muddled interview), and George Harrison is playing on it (and obviously Paul and Ringo). I'm not sure how much they'll emphasize other aspects of proper context (e.g. how much will they mention Jeff Lynne, the Anthology, the use of old "Because" vocals, etc.), and I'm pretty sure they *won't* emphasize what Paul and Jeff and others (including, at least passively, Olivia) have spoken of in the past as far as George "going off" the song back in 1995. While I've argued that he probably had more of a passing disinterest in it than "hating" the song, it's going to get a bit awkward (depending on how much the media does their job and digs up old interviews) when or if questions arise as to why they're doing the song when George soured on it back in 1995.

Some of this will depend on how much they put Giles Martin out there as the face of the thing for the media. He wasn't around the guys back in 1995, and I assume he never discussed the song with George. So he can easily talk around that and just speak to the fact that George is on the track via his 1995 contributions.

 

Yeah, as we know now, George in the mid-90s didn't even have a lot of interest in finishing his own material in the studio, so I can understand how a hurdle like tape buzz and maybe a lyrical disagreement with Paul or something like that could completely drain his enthusiasm for working on Now and Then.

 

They can say the recording needed much work, as it is still and is forever unconfirmed whether George hated the song itself or the idea of working hard on a recording of inferior quality, which would have never been able to sound like a state-of-the-art recording in 1996.

 

I think that's the angle for sure.

"We all loved Free as a Bird, then tried Now and Then next, but technical difficulties with the demo tape made it impossible for us to get too far with it, so George suggested we move on to Real Love. Now, technology has allowed us to mix out the noise on John's demo, take what we did with George in 1995, pick up right where we left off, and finally complete this special song."

 

Paul’s initial statements were perfectly clear that AI was used to strip out all the instrumentation except for John’s voice from the source tape:

 

I would like to hear Rock Island Line/Midnight Special, which was supposedly a little more formal and maybe another session?

 

Yeah, I know this was already litigated, what is it, three months ago now? Yes, it was lazy media (and social media users) not fully reading or understanding Paul's interview that was the problem. *But*, while Paul's answer isolated from any other context seems clear enough, his answer *in the context of the interview* is what set off the problems, because he answered a question about re-creating/faking voices through AI (and de-aging them via AI) by talking about both fake AI voices *and* using AI to isolate things. His answer was muddled in relation to the question. He smushed together talking about two *very different* types of AI applications.

The last sentence of the bit you quoted above that was left off has Paul saying this:

So … we came to make what will be the last Beatles record. It was a demo that John had that we worked on and we just finished it up to be released this year. We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI, so then we could mix the record as you would normally do, you know. So it gives you it gives you some sort of leeway, so there’s a good side to it and then a scary side, and we’re just not to see where that leads.

Again, if someone actually understands all of the different applications of AI, and reads (or listens to) his interview thoroughly, then it's clear he's talking about AI isolation/extraction software. So again, it was absolutely lazy media running with the muddled story. But from a common sense/PR point of view, Paul's compound sort of answer (and indeed, even *talking about* the track at all) was not a good idea and didn't help. The "common" reader and public in general, when they hear "AI", they think of fake, artificially-generated things. Not precision sound extraction software.

I'm not going to ascribe like a specific percentage of blame to the whole thing blowing up afterwards. But if Paul hadn't said anything, we wouldn't have gotten the headlines.

 

I remember reading (back in '95) that the electric jams with Jeff included I Saw Her Standing There, Sgt. Pepper, Roll over Beethoven, Love Me Do and Besame Mucho. Also that everything was filmed and recorded. But anyone who is a musician knows that a loose jam versus rehearsals and tightening (which I highly doubt took place), are two different things, the former could be as rough as nagra and Toot (and Clapton's 79 jam).