The last new Beatles song, ‘Now And Then,’ will be released next week

FILE -The Beatles, foreground from left, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr on drums perform on the CBS “Ed Sullivan Show” in New York on Feb. 9, 1964. Sixty years after the onset of Beatlemania and with two of the quartet now dead, artificial intelligence has enabled the release of a “new” Beatles song.“Now And Then,” will be available Thursday, Nov. 2. 

Sixty years after the onset of Beatlemania and with two of the quartet now dead, artificial intelligence has enabled the release next week of what is promised to be the last “new” Beatles song.

The track, called “Now And Then,” will be available Thursday, Nov. 2, as part of a single paired with “Love Me Do,” the very first Beatles single that came out in 1962 in England, it was announced Thursday.

“Now And Then” comes from the same batch of unreleased demos written by the late John Lennon, which were taken by his former bandmates to construct the songs “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love,” released in the mid-1990s.

Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison worked on “Now And Then” in the same sessions, but technological limitations stood in the way.

With the help of artificial intelligence, director Peter Jackson cleared those problems up by “separating” Lennon’s original vocals from a piano used in the late 1970s. The much clearer vocals allowed McCartney and Starr to complete the track last year.

The survivors packed plenty into it. The new single contains guitar that Harrison had recorded nearly three decades ago, a new drum part by Starr, with McCartney’s bass, piano and a slide guitar solo he added as a tribute to Harrison, who died in 2001. McCartney and Starr sang backup.

McCartney also added a string arrangement written with the help of Giles Martin, son of the late Beatles producer George Martin.

As if that wasn’t enough, they weaved in backing vocals from the original Beatles recordings of “Here, There and Everywhere,” “Eleanor Rigby” and “Because.”