The Beatles have posted on YouTube a 12-minute documentary on the making of their final song, "Now and Then," which will have its worldwide premiere this Thursday at 10 a.m. ET.
BIG 100 will play the song at the top of every hour all day!
The doc features interview clips with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, the late George Harrison, director Peter Jackson and Sean Lennon, the youngest son of John.
They tell the story of how, in the mid-'90s, Yoko Ono gave Paul, George and Ringo tapes of three home recordings John had made, with hopes that they would be able to add their parts to them for The Beatles' Anthology project. They were successful with two of them, "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love," but with the third song, "Now and Then," they weren't able to isolate Lennon's vocal from the piano, let alone the TV playing in the background.
However, after Peter Jackson, director of their 2022 documentary Get Back, was able to isolate certain tracks for the Let It Be film using new De-Mix technology, Paul sent him the tape of "Now and Then" in hopes that he could achieve the same results.
He did, and with the guitar tracks George laid down in 1995 (he passed in 2001), Paul and Ringo redid their parts, and so we now have the last song ever recorded to feature all four Beatles.
You'll hear the original demo of "Now and Then" in the documentary along with snippets of the new version, but will have to wait until Thursday to hear the whole thing.
Source: Beatles.com and Premiere