The Making of the Last Beatles Song, “Now and Then”: A Short Film

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Peter Jack­son’s doc­u­men­tary, Get Back, used cut­ting-edge soft­ware to restore footage from the Bea­t­les’ Let It Be record­ing ses­sions. If you watched the film, you know it was mag­ic. Now, his tech­nol­o­gy offers us anoth­er gift–the final Bea­t­les song.

As the short film explains above, the mak­ing of the song, “Now and Then,” began in 1995, when Paul, George and Ringo start­ed work­ing with a demo record­ed by John Lennon dur­ing the 1970s. The project even­tu­al­ly stalled out when the trio could­n’t pristine­ly extract Lennon’s vocals. Then George Har­ri­son died, and anoth­er two decades slipped by. Last year, Jack­son’s soft­ware sal­vaged the project, allow­ing the Bea­t­les to cap­ture the elu­sive Lennon vocal and com­plete their final song. “Now and Then” is set to be released on Novem­ber 3, accom­pa­nied by a music video cre­at­ed by Jack­son him­self. Stay tuned for that.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Peter Jack­son Used Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Restore the Video & Audio Fea­tured in The Bea­t­les: Get Back

Watch Paul McCart­ney Com­pose The Bea­t­les Clas­sic “Get Back” Out of Thin Air (1969)

A Sneak Peek of Peter Jackson’s New Bea­t­les Doc­u­men­tary Get Back: Watch the New Trail­er

How Peter Jack­son Made His State-of-the-Art World War I Doc­u­men­tary, They Shall Not Grow Old: An Inside Look