There is No Such Thing as The Final Beatles Release
Questioning the validity of “Now And Then”
Since the release of “Now And Then,” I have been seeing a lot of this sort of thing: People referring to it as “the final Beatles song,” and generally believing the release of this utterly satisfactory, even winsome un-curving softball of a track somehow signals the end of something.
“Now And Then” signals the end of absolutely nothing, apart from an artificial, ill-placed punctuation mark dropped in the rather long sentence which is the continued commercial exploitation of the Beatles masters, intellectual property, and trademark. (Not all that exploitation is bad, by the way.) In purely practical terms, there will most certainly be other “new” Beatles objects, whether they’re remixes by Giles Martin or others; Apple-authorized stage shows featuring novel or even reconfigured presentation of the extant material; not to mention further Frankenstein-ing of The Beatles’ work, i.e., “new” material built out of old pieces (as was done, quite wonderfully at times, in the Cirque De Soleil Love show). Face it: Until the day the last living widow, the last living child, or the last living grandchild of a Beatle has figured out a way to squeeze another dollar out of their released and unreleased masters or demos (and/or constructions or reconstructions therein, both imaginable and inconceivable), there will always be something bloody “new” from The Beatles. This isn’t speculation or criticism; it’s just a fact.
Here’s another fact: In literal terms, the last Beatles song was “I Me Mine.” That was the last song worked on by the four Beatles in their final recording session. That sounds “final” enough to me. And I’ll stand by this and climb on any milk crate in Union Square and shout it to the world, again and again: A Beatles song is something recorded by the Beatles with the knowledge that it might be released as a Beatles song. Therefore, I’m going to actually lay down a rule here and say that for something to be an actual Beatles song, it had to have been recorded between June 22, 1961 (the first day The Beatles went into a recording studio with the knowledge that what they would create during the session would likely be released) and January 3, 1970 (the last day the Beatles went into a recording studio with the knowledge that what they would create during the session would likely be released). Everything else is an imposition, a presumption laid upon someone else’s intention.
And in, well, spiritual terms (and I’m not going to bang on about this, because it has been well covered elsewhere), “Now And Later” – wait, that’s a resolutely mediocre candy a neighbor tried to foist on you at Halloween in 1972 – “Now And Then” is not a goddamn Beatles song. No. No. It’s Paul McCartney overdubbing a lesser John Lennon demo. Period. Full stop, as the English say. Some people will say, “Oh, but on many occasions the Beatles released music that featured just one or two members!” Yeh, but here’s a big difference: Songs like, say, “Yesterday,” “The Ballad of John and Yoko” or “Back in the U.S.S.R.” (to note some better-known examples of Beatle songs that did not feature all four Beatles) were recorded with the knowledge that they were being recorded for a Beatles release. In other words, when Paul and John banged out “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” they bloody well knew that it was going to end up on a Beatles album. They knew they were making a Beatles song, just one that happened to feature only two Beatles. But when John Lennon put down the demo for “Now And Then” (or, for that matter, “Free as a Bird” or “Real Love”) he was most decidedly, surely, and definitively not thinking, “Paul’s gonna show up soon and overdub his bit and this is going to end up on a Beatles’ record.” He did not, in any way, shape, or form, record “Now And Then” (or those others cited) with the intention or knowledge that they would be Beatles songs.
It was Paul McCartney and/or his accountant and/or Paul’s profound anxiety over all that attention Taylor Swift is getting who decided these Lennon demos would be Beatles songs, and just because Paul decided these non-Beatles songs are Beatles songs, does that mean they are? What’s next? Will Paul take a Beatle-esque solo track – say, “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” – bring in Ringo to play on it, have Giles drop in some John Lennon-sourced ooohs and aaahs, and release it as a Beatles song? (Actually, I’d totally listen to that.) And, even more frightening, in theory, isn’t there a nearly bottomless well of John and George demos, or vocal sketches, that Paul could decide to transform into these absurd, demeaning, unnecessary FrankenBeatle tracks?
I have a theory about all this: I suspect Paul may be driven by a rising and dangerous disorder spreading rapidly throughout the community of legacy artists: AOSUS, that is, Anxiety Over Swift’s Ubiquity Syndrome. Imagine this: For a long, long time, you’ve been considered the top of your game in terms of income, influence and exposure, the pinnacle of your profession, and suddenly you are swept off that perch. You didn’t see that coming. I am quite sure Paul McCartney never expected someone would come along who would equal the social, cultural, economic and generational impact The Beatles had. Yet it happened.
My god, the terror and the humiliation this must strike in the artists’ heart! In fact, AOSUS is having a significant impact across the industry: Lady Gaga has taken to doing cameos whenever she can grab them in nearly Dave Grohl-ish fashion; Madonna has undertaken a bizarre backing-track only tour in some weird attempt to reclaim relevance, visibility and virility; and the Stones are, well, the Stones, as terrified of mortality and impermanence as any creature mythology ever whelped, summoning the wide-eyed horror-scowl of Yamāntaka with every SNL walk-on. But I think AOSUS manifests itself most acutely in the “Lookit ME Mommy! Lookit ME Mommy!”-isms of Sir Paul, personified in his need to generate fake Beatles songs no one asks for, no one needs, and which add zero-minus-zero to the Beatles legacy.
Oh, and let’s talk about the video. The video for “Now And Then” is admirable, I mean downright sweet, but it’s also such a cheap trick on so many levels: It’s basically just Klaatu plus a Sarah Mclachlan Abused Puppies commercial, and it takes the Fake News/FrankenBeatles thing to an extreme that truly insults everything the Beatles ever released during their actual lifespan.
I do not need Peter Jackson and Paul and Ringo to use old films of The Beatles to create fake fucking news, I have enough of that in the real world. And while we’re at it, Mr. Jackson, you still owe me the chunk of my ass that will never recover from sitting through the third Lord of the Rings movie, which I swear felt longer than the Once Upon a Time in America/Shoah double feature someone dared me to watch in 1988.
It is also important to note this: Although Sir Paul is giving the world and Beatles fans something they didn’t ask for – fake, mediocre Beatles songs – he’s not giving us something we really want, have asked for, and would truly contribute to the legacy: “Carnival of Light,” the only legitimate finished (and historically fascinating) Beatles track that has never seen the light of day; and perhaps more significantly, für die Liebe Gottes, a cleaned-up and remastered release of the full Hamburg Star Club tapes.
VIDEO: The History of the Lost Beatles Song
Now, I won’t go to the trouble of describing “Carnival of Light” – man, just Google it, okay? Any attempt to discuss “Carnival of Light” would lead us down a rabbit hole that would make my obsessive meanderings about Blue Öyster Cult’s Imaginos look like an “I’m here” text from your Uber driver.
But I will describe the Star Club tapes a wee bit: Two or three years back, a technically inclined Beatles fan took it upon themselves to collate, clean up, tweak and do a truly terrific stereo master on the sundry Star Club tapes that were floating around (recorded over three nights at the end of December 1962, during the Beatles final run at the Star Club). This 78-minute fan-generated Star Club tape (notably different and vastly superior to the semi-authorized Star Club releases that have been floating around since 1977) is, well, a freaking revelation, and without any doubt one of the most important post-1970 Beatles releases. It actually documents that The Beatles were, at least at one time, what their acolytes always claimed they were (and what their George Martin-produced releases rarely revealed): a band who played American roots rock ‘n’ roll with a frenzied, frantic, frictioned heat-rash of a dash, a group who (in December of 1962, anyway) had more in common with the Trashmen, the Kingsmen, the Remains, the Milkshakes, Dr. Feelgood, the Hammersmith Gorillas or even Mötorhead than they did with The Beatles who recorded for EMI/Parlophone between 1962 and 1970.
This is what you need to know about these fan-made Star Club re-masters: Imagine the most extreme, ferocious, feral place the Beatles go to on the (released version of) “Twist and Shout”: That’s the point of ecstasy and energy where the Star Club tapes begin. In addition, the Star Club re-masters utterly shut the eff down any complaints I ever had about Ringo Starr; he’s a freaking monster on the Star Club tapes, playing jackhammer-hard, Bullet Train fast, and tight, too, with a kick-foot that could (seriously) compete with John Bonham. Not one single recording of Ringo that I have ever heard does justice to the precise, Tommy Ramone-meets-Bobby Graham caveman you hear on the Star Club tapes.
If you don’t believe me, listen to one single track from the reconstructed Star Club fan re-master: their version of Billy “The Kid” Emerson’s “My Girl is Red Hot” (it sounds like the Beatles have learned the song from the version recorded in 1959 by Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks). The Beatles’ “Red Hot” from the Star Club is literally, yes effing literally, one of the best and most important recordings the Fabs ever made. I’m not sure about the legality of the Star Club tapes; I’ve heard that George Harrison’s estate have a pristine copy of the original reel-to-reel. Put Giles to work on that, please, Sir Paul.
But more importantly, most importantly, getting all wet behind the bifocals and thinking this is the “end” of something is, well, nonsense. Here’s why (and this is the most important thing I’ll have to say today):
We are the Beatles. That is to say, the Beatles, in all their beautiful and ridiculous hagiography and mythology, are nothing without us; they are a creation of our needs, our desires, and most importantly, our memories. I cannot stress this enough: The Beatles are the most significant mnemonic for any of us who were born in the middle-ish of the 20th century. Their music, their life events, and their career arc accompanied so many of our own experiences. The Beatles are, almost literally, the pencil marks on the walls of our houses noting our height over the years. That is The Beatles.
For many of us, they were the gateway drug to the world of pop, the artist who taught us, guided us, set the bar for us, inspired us to look outward and discover. They have been, likely, the single most constant and stable sociocultural and geo-cultural touchstone in our lives. And they achieved this status because they were the pop culture version of the very air around us, the very earth underneath our feet, the very sky that lit us awake and dimmed us asleep. We shared that power with them, happily. No Beatles song can be the “final” Beatles song because there is no finality to our shared experience with them. If a new and verified gospel was found, would we dare say, “This is the final word of the Christ?” No. Never. The word of Jesus – or whoever sits on your mantle or inspires your heart – is never “final.”
The Beatles are us, our lives, and we don’t need any of this other nonsense to underline, confirm, or validate their place in our lives.
VIDEO: The Beatles “Now And Then”
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