A new Beatles song is due out later this year. Paul McCartney said so in an interview broadcast on BBC 4 radio. The announcement is considered a minor sensation: the band broke up in 1970, and now only two of the four musicians are still alive: John Lennon was shot in New York in 1980, and guitarist George Harrison died in 2001.
However, that does not prevent McCartney from releasing one last song: The musician, who will be 81 in a few days on June 18, revealed in the half-hour radio interview how the production came about: Apparently, the artificial intelligence (AI) helped to make Lennon’s voice audible. An old demo tape served as the basis, the quality of which McCartney describes as “miserable”. Thanks to the AI, it was possible to separate Lennon’s voice from the piano music on the tape.
According to the BBC, it is apparently the 1978 song “Now And Then”. In 1995 he was already in talks about becoming part of the “Anthology” series, which was published from 1995 onwards. Back then, the two songs “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love” were released as the first new Beatles songs in 25 years. At the time, producer Jeff Lynne had reworked the demos.
In 1994, John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono gave McCartney a cassette containing several songs Lennon recorded shortly before his death, the tape was labeled “For Paul”. The pieces on it were provisionally recorded on a cassette recorder while the musician sat at the piano in his New York apartment.
In 1995, however, he was thrown out for “Anthology” – according to McCartney, George Harrison, who was still alive at the time, spoke out against it – he thought the sound quality of Lennon’s vocal track was too bad. Back then bad luck for all Beatles fans – today their luck: only the rejection at that time enables them to hear a new song by the Fab Four in 2023.
Source used: “BBC.com”
