While The Beatles‘ new song, “Now and Then,” is being billed as their “last,” director Peter Jackson says they could possibly do more.
It was Jackson and his team, while working on last year’s Get Back documentary, that came up with software enabling them to separate audio tracks. That same software was used to extract John Lennon‘s vocals from his demo of “Now and Then,” allowing Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to add further instrumentation and vocals along with George Harrison‘s guitar parts from the mid-’90s when they tried to finish it for their Anthology collection.
In an interview with The Sunday Times of London, Jackson was asked if there’s footage from the Get Back (Let it Be) sessions that Paul and Ringo could work with to create more songs.
“It did cross my mind!” he says with a laugh. “We can take a performance from Get Back, separate John and George, and then have Paul and Ringo add a chorus or harmonies. You might end up with a decent song but I haven’t had conversations with Paul about that. It’s fanboy stuff, but certainly conceivable.”
As for “Now and Then,” Jackson, who directed the song’s video, says it “sounds like John is writing a message as an apology for however he may have behaved. I found that incredibly moving, that the final Beatles song is the Beatles singing to each other.
“And it’s such a catchy tune! … It’s not a classic in the sense of ‘I Am the Walrus’ or ‘Penny Lane’ — it’s not complex like that. It’s simple, but it’s got a haunting quality. Whenever anyone asks why I like the Beatles, I just say they make me happy. With the world in the state it is, we need the Beatles to appear again, as if a flying saucer has touched down and they’ve got off and are providing us with their one last song to cheer us up.”
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