'Now and Then' and the Question of What Counts as a Beatles Song

In a televised performance of The Beatles in 1965, George Harrison gave the following spiel:

“We’d like to do something now which we’ve never ever done before, and it’s a track off our new LP. And this song’s called Yesterday, and so, for Paul McCartney of Liverpool, opportunity knocks.”

It was a cheeky dig at McCartney, who was about to give the first ever public performance of “Yesterday,” the first Beatles song that did not require any participation from the other band members. 

After Paul’s performance, John Lennon rushes to the stage with a bouquet of flowers, but he comically gives Paul only the stems. Immediately after, he quips “thank you Ringo, that was wonderful.”

ALSO READ

Paul McCartney Says a New Beatles Record Is Coming—with AI John Lennon

The Last Beatles Single Is Not the End

I cannot help but think of this sequence when I first heard the new Beatles song “Now and Then,” which was released worldwide last November 2. It is the first “new” Beatles song since 1996.

In “Yesterday,” The Beatles went along with what was essentially a solo act by McCartney. But it is almost universally considered a bona fide Beatles song. “Now and Then,” on the other hand, raises the philosophical question: what is a Beatles song?  

What conditions must be satisfied in order for a song to qualify as a Beatles song? The question is much more complicated than it seems.

“Now and Then” is ostensibly a Beatles song. It was released as a Beatles single, and it is included in a newly remastered Beatles compilation album. It features performances from John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. It’s got the trademark odd musical key change, as well as a sudden time signature shift, that we hear in many Beatles songs. They couldn’t bring back George Martin from the dead, even with all the AI technology at hand, so they got the next best thing, which is Giles Martin, the son of the legendary Beatles producer. So it’s a Beatles song, right?

Insert awkward pause here.

One issue is that, as “Yesterday” suggests, a song doesn’t need to include all the Beatles to be considered a Beatles song. There are numerous examples in the band’s song catalog wherein not all the members of the band performed. 

“Now and Then” tries to supposedly avoid this problem by including contributions from all the Beatles…arguably. 

The contribution that gets the most media attention is of course Lennon’s vocals brought to us by the magic of AI. Much has been said about the “artificialness” of the vocals if it has been merely recreated by AI. But producers and music experts have pointed out that the AI technology was only used to “extract” a clear copy of Lennon’s voice from the original cassette recording. This is bound to be a sticking point in many debates for years to come, as AI technology use in music becomes more prevalent. 

I’m willing to set that issue aside. Lennon has always been critical of his singing voice, and he often asked studio engineers to manipulate it. In “Tomorrow Never Knows,” for example, he asked the engineers to make his voice sound like the Dalai Lama chanting on a mountaintop. Using AI to extract Lennon’s voice from a low-tech cassette recording is just a contemporary version of these sonic experiments from the 1960s. If in doubt, just call it music sampling. 

McCartney’s and Starr’s instrumental work on the song feature their signature sounds. The “workaholic” bass guitar is there, as is the steady sit-in-the-song drumbeat.

It’s Harrison’s contribution to the song that is questionable. In the short documentary about the making of “Now and Then,” McCartney states that they mined archival recordings from 1995 for Harrison’s guitar parts. The slide guitar heard on the released record is actually McCartney playing “as a tribute” to Harrison.

This leads us to what I think is an overlooked but crucial aspect in “Now and Then” being a Beatles song. Of the two dead Beatles, it’s not Lennon that we’re missing here (he’s practically everywhere in the song!). Harrison’s absence is less discussed, but it is much more significant.  

Which brings me back to that night in 1965 when McCartney gave his solo rendition of “Yesterday.” Though it was only McCartney onstage, the Beatles went along with it. They poked fun at McCartney, but they still acquiesced to the whole thing. 

This, I assert, is the Beatles’ trademark. It’s not a particular sound (the terms “Beatles-ey” or “Beatle-esque” are awkward and overused anyway). It’s not a particular configuration of members and instruments (none of the Beatles play any instruments in “Eleanor Rigby”). It’s the approval, overt or implied, of all the members of the band.  

It’s not a Beatles song if the whole band did not approve of it, even begrudgingly. 

So even if Lennon and Harrison hated McCartney’s “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” it still appeared on Abbey Road, because they went along with it. Even if Harrison’s “Not Guilty” was arguably better than a lot of the filler in The White Album, it didn’t see the light of day because, conversely, the other Beatles did not approve it. 

This may seem idealistic, and surely a great deal of politics and social dynamics are involved in the Beatles agreeing to release any particular song, but it provides us a useful distinction. 

For “Now and Then,” it goes without saying that McCartney and Starr went along with it. The only sides left to consider are Lennon and Harrison. 

I’m not going to discuss if Lennon had—or would have—approved of his demos being turned into Beatles songs. Most of the evidence for this is anecdotal, and we often just hear Yoko Ono or Sean Lennon saying that Lennon would have loved it, or he would have approved of it, or he would have been thrilled, and so on. But that still does not constitute an unambiguous endorsement of the proceedings. Hypothetical assumptions from the widow and the youngest son are nice, but they pale in comparison to the real thing. 

In contrast, McCartney himself had stated that Harrison declared “Now and Then” to be “rubbish” and not worth it. Harrison has also been on record saying, tongue-in-cheek, that he wishes someone would turn his own “crap demos” into “hit songs” when he’s dead. 

Which brings me to the crux of this whole matter. Without Lennon and Harrison having a definitive say on the proceedings, “Now and Then” is essentially a McCartney project (no offense, Ringo). While it can be argued that McCartney pushed the Beatles before to do his songs the way he wanted to, at least the rest of the Beatles were there to voice their opinions. 

“Now and Then,” then, is more of a “what-if” than an actual Beatles song. If Lennon and Harrison were still around, what would they say about it? Unfortunately, not even the best available AI technology can tell us that today. I’m afraid though that that last statement won’t age well in the next few years.