Now and Then - From John Lennon Original Demo Tape (Remastered By Perfect Silence Creation 2023)

Now and Then (REMASTERED 2023) From John Lennon Original Demo Tape Enhanced Piano and Vocal Tracks (With Original Bridge In Demo Tape) By : Perfect Silence Creation Lennon wrote “Now and Then“ in the late 1970s, and recorded a demo in around 1977 on a tape recorder at his home at the Dakota in New York City. The lyrics are typical of the apologetic love songs that Lennon wrote in the latter half of his career. For the most part the verses are nearly complete, though there are still a few lines that Lennon did not flesh out on the demo tape performance. Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Stephen Thomas Erlewine called Lennon’s composition “a wispy, melancholy ballad“, while Billboard’s Kyle Denis described the song as “a lovelorn guitar-centric rock ballad“. Referring to the original demo, Craig Jenkins of Vulture said “’Now and Then’ languished in an unfinished state, its vocal and piano melodies enshrouded in too dense a thicket of abrasively scratchy hiss to massage into the high-quality recordings the Beatles were known for“. Beatles first version with Harrison In January 1994, the year John Lennon was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, his widow, Yoko Ono, gave Paul McCartney two cassette tapes she had previously mentioned to George Harrison. The tapes included home recordings of songs that Lennon had never completed or released commercially, two of them on one tape being the eventually completed and released “Free as a Bird“ and “Real Love“. The two other songs on the other tape were “Grow Old with Me“ and “Now and Then“. “Grow Old with Me“ had already been released in 1984 on the posthumous album Milk and Honey, so the Beatles turned their attention to “Now and Then“. In March 1995, the three surviving Beatles began to work on it by recording a rough backing track that was to be used as an overdub. However, after only two days of recording, all work on the song ceased and plans for a third reunion single were scrapped. Producer Jeff Lynne reported that sessions for “Now and Then“ consisted only of “one day – one afternoon, really – messing with it. The song had a chorus but is almost totally lacking in verses. We did the backing track, a rough go that we really didn’t finish“. An additional factor behind scrapping the song was a technical defect in the original recording. As with “Real Love“, a 60-Hz mains hum can be heard throughout Lennon’s demo recording. However, it was noticeably louder on “Now and Then“, making it much harder to remove. The project was largely shelved because of Harrison’s dislike of the song due to its low-quality recording. McCartney later stated that “George didn’t like it. The Beatles being a democracy, we didn’t do it.“ “George felt the technical issues with the demo were insurmountable and concluded that it was not possible to finish the track to a high enough standard. “Now and Then“ is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, released on 2 November 2023. Dubbed “the last Beatles song“, it appeared on a double A-side single, paired with a new stereo remix of the band’s first single, “Love Me Do“ (1962), with the two serving as “bookends“ to the band’s history. Both songs were included on the expanded re-issues of the 1973 compilations 1962–1966 and 1967–1970, released on 10 November 2023. “Now and Then“ is a psychedelic soft rock ballad that John Lennon wrote and recorded in around 1977 as a five-minute solo piano home demo, but left unfinished. After Lennon’s death in 1980, the song was considered as the third Beatles reunion single for their 1995–1996 retrospective project The Beatles Anthology, following “Free as a Bird“ and “Real Love“, both based on Lennon’s demos. Instead, it was shelved for nearly three decades, until it was completed by the surviving bandmates Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, using overdubs and guitar tracks by George Harrison (who died in 2001) from the abandoned 1995 sessions. The final version features additional lyrics by McCartney, and Lennon’s voice extracted from the demo using the AI-backed audio restoration technology commissioned by Peter Jackson for his 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back. The Lennon demo is almost a minute longer than the Beatles release, largely because the former includes two pre-chorus bridges that the latter removes. (Removed Bridge) A major difference between the demo version and the officially released version aside from the song’s structure and the minor lyrical changes is the omission of the bridge, which starts with the line, “I don’t wanna lose you...“ The bridge happens twice in the demo with different words. There exists a lyric sheet printed five years after Lennon’s death that was used during the 1995 Anthology sessions. PSC