As readers of my blog know, every now and then, I weigh in on some cultural phenomenon, often having to do with music. And as astute followers of my blog are also aware, I’m a big fan of Beatles music and have been since I was a wee lad. Like many boys born at the turn of the 1970s, my gateway drug into the Fab Four was the album (and film) Yellow Submarine, which I wore the grooves off at the age of five. By six, I’d graduated to Sgt. Pepper’s, and then quickly strode on to Abbey Road. The White Album followed on their heels. By the age of ten, Revolver was on heavy rotation, as was Rubber Soul. At twelve, I was going hard into Let it Be. But I was also listening to their earliest albums, such as Introducing the Beatles, Meet the Beatles, Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, Hard Day’s Night, Beatles Second Album, Beatles ‘65. Naturally, these were all the US versions of the albums. Later in high school I discovered and devoured the UK versions, With the Beatles, Beatles for Sale. By the end of high school, I had at least 20 Beatles discs in my album collection. As you can see from the photo, I still have them today.

As I delved into their discography, I came to know their individual personalities as well as their contributions to the songs. At the time, other than what was available on or inside the albums themselves, or films like Hard Day’s Night, there was very little visual material to go with the listening experience. Instead, one had to imagine them singing and playing the music. As with many boys who grow up with the four lads, they became like imaginary friends and boon companions. In times of trouble, they were there to keep me company and assuage my sorrows. They were the brothers I never had in real life. They never judged me, and they were always there with supportive and kind advice.

At the same time, I was keenly aware that the Beatles had broken up as a band around the time I was born in 1969. They had all gone their own ways and were making their own music, as post-Beatles individuals or with new bands like Wings. We had the McCartney album Ram, and I loved Ringo’s album Blast From Your Past, which came out when I was five. I didn’t have any John or George albums but was aware of their solo efforts, which were often on the radio. When John died in 1980, we all mourned his senseless death, and my sixth grade class held a vigil in his memory. I dreamed that the Beatles were getting in a Volkswagen Beetle and saying goodbye forever.

Fast forward to the 1990s, when I was a graduate student at Columbia University living in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It had been a while since I’d delved into Beatles music. In college, I became obsessed with classical music. In graduate school, I’d been listening to a lot of other music, including jazz, and getting into New York sounds like Lou Reed, Tom Waits, and the Rolling Stones (for me, Beatles are Boston, and Stones are New York City). Then, in 1995, the Anthology documentary series came out, along with an album of Beatles tunes that I’d never heard before, or never heard in the way they were playing them. I devoured both the series, which aired on TV, and the CDs, listening to them over and over. They were both a revelation. Suddenly, we had intimate access to the visual archive and storytelling of the Fab Four, and to their recording studio where we could hear them coming up with their songs. We were able to see and hear them in deeper, richer tones and in a new light. To top it off, they released two new Beatles songs, which nobody had ever heard before. I couldn’t have imagined this happening in my wildest dreams. “Free as a Bird” was the first to come out. It was accompanied by a cool video with clues to myriad Beatles songs in a Liverpuddlian landscape, a kind of Beatles dreamscape that paid homage to John Lennon. Then there was “Real Love.” With Lennon’s voice blended with the others, and with soaring harmonies and scintillating guitar solos by George, both songs sounded like the Beatles. For me there was no question that these were Beatles songs, even though we had to accept that John wasn’t there to complete them with the other three.

Since then, there have been various new releases of Beatles music in different guises and forms. And in 2021, we were thrilled by the Get Back documentary series by Peter Jackson, which once again brought us into the intimate arena of the Beatles as they struggled to make the album Let it Be and perform their last concert on the Apple building rooftop in London. We witnessed their efforts to create new music together and overcome their differences to create what would be the final and one of the best Beatles albums (despite the well acknowledged overproduction of the album by Phil Spector).

Now, in November 2023, another Beatles miracle has been performed. A third and final Beatles song has emerged from the recordings made by Lennon before his untimely death. This was supposed to be included with the Anthology series, but at the time, John’s voice couldn’t be separated from his piano work. Now, with the technology of AI and the innovations of Peter Jackson and his team, they can do so, and John’s voice comes out crystal clear in the recording. The remaining two Beatles, Paul and Ringo, worked along with Giles Martin, the son of George Martin who contributed so much to the Beatles oeuvre, to complete the song. It’s a true labor of love. Both men are now in their 80s, and they have long since lost two of the closest companions of their youth, the only other two men who knew what it was to be a Beatle. This song is a testament to that four-way friendship and collaboration that created some of the best popular music of all time.

Since it was released a week ago, the song “Now and Then” has stirred up a lot of discussion and debate on social media. I’ve been following posts on Facebook and have seen many videos on Youtube discussing the song and its back story, and I’ve formed my own opinions of the song as well. One of the questions that has emerged is, is this truly a Beatles song? With two of the members long since passed on, what makes it so? Another question people are asking is why they decided to leave out the “middle 8” part that John originally recorded, the part with the lines “use you and abuse you” in it? A third question is, regardless of whether this is really a Beatles song, is it a good one?

Personally, I’ve gone back and forth on all these questions. Of course, we must accept that this is officially a Beatles song as it has been released as such. And who can doubt the word of Sir Paul, or Ringo, or Giles son of George Martin, or the estates of John and George? Yet what makes a song a Beatles song? Why were we more ready to accept the earlier releases of “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” as Beatles songs, but more reticent to do so with “Now and Then”?

For one thing, back in the 1990s, three of the Beatles (or the Threetles as some like to call them) were still alive. A tripod stands up well on its own. Now, George is long gone (he passed in 2001), and only Paul and Ringo were left to finish the work they’d started in the 1990s. And we have some testimony that George thought the song was “rubbish.” Was it just the recording he was talking about, or was it the song itself? One can imagine that George wasn’t too pleased with the “heart on sleeve” lyrics that John had come up with for the song. Or was it the strange chord progressions and the movement from A minor to G major? I haven’t done any further research on this question of George’s response to the song, so I don’t know and certainly would be curious to learn more about his attitude toward the song. Nevertheless, he did some guitar work on behalf of the song before they scrapped it. But for me, one key thing that’s missing from the song, which was such a huge part of the first two songs, is a George guitar solo. Does that make is any less of a Beatles song? Perhaps not.

What about the missing “middle 8” part? Why did they remove it? Was it the lyrics? Or did the chord progression and melody just not fit in well with the rest of the song? Apparently, this was Paul’s decision. Nobody can doubt Paul’s musical genius, after all he wrote some of the most cherished songs in the history of popular music. Yet by removing this part, did they also remove some of the depth of the original song, with John singing “I don’t want to lose you”? It seems that John is crying out for love in this part, and that’s missing from the version they released last week.

If John is mourning a lost love, what is the true nature of this song? It got me thinking that this song could be a lament at the death of a loved one. Who would that be? Could it be John’s own mother Julia, who he wrote one of his best songs about on the White Album? That song also happens to be the longest single-note song that John ever sang (18 single notes in a row—thanks to the podcast Something About the Beatles for this insight!). What could be more painful than losing one’s own mother in a freak bus accident? Especially when she wasn’t a big part of his life to begin with, and maybe she would have become so if it hadn’t been for her sudden loss? Paul also lost his mother, who later came to him in a dream when the band was on the verge of breakup and famously told him to “let it be.” Many people have speculated that the death of their mothers brought the two lads closer together. Then in 1980, John was killed in an even more senseless and meaningless act of violence. To this day, no true Beatles fan has ever really gotten over that. Certain I haven’t.

Thus, the resurrection of John through AI is kind of a holy moment in the history of the Beatles and of pop music. His voice re-emerges clear as a bell to give us a final message. Paul, the apostle, is carrying that message forward, along with Ringo and the others. The message is a deep one about friendship, love, and loss. And we should all heed it carefully.

As I was deep diving into this song and its origins, I was also carrying on a big project of digitizing old videos and film in my own personal collection. My own near death last summer due to a health crisis that I may discuss another time made me realize that the most important aspect of life is one’s relationships with family and friends, in that order. I’ve been going through my own personal collection of photos and videos and sending out copies to friends and family this fall, as a way of reconnecting with old friends and remembering the times and the bonds that brought us together. As I was listening to the final resurrection of the Beatles, I was scanning slides and sending out photos to friends and reconnecting all the dots that brought us together and reminiscing on some of the good times we had. Somehow this converged with the project of reviving this old tune of John’s that became a Beatles song as the other three members of the band came together to complete it in their own way. As I sent out each photo, I could have added the words, “Now and then, I miss you.”