In January 1994, Paul McCartney was given two tape cassettes by Lennons widow Yoko Ono that included home recordings of songs Lennon never completed or released commercially. The songs on the tape included the eventually completed and released Free as a Bird and Real Love, in addition to two other songs was a tape with the words for Paul scrawled hastily in Johns handwriting, which included Grow Old With Me and Now and Then.[1] In March 1995, the three surviving Beatles began work on Now and Then by recording a rough backing track that was to be used as an overdub. However, after only two days of recording, all work on the song ceased and plans for a third reunion single were scrapped permanently. According to McCartney, George Harrison didnt want to do it,[2] possibly because new verses would have had to be written. Producer Jeff Lynne reported that It was one day—one afternoon, really—messing with it. The song had a chorus but is almost totally lacking in verses. We did the backing track, a rough go that we really didnt finish.[2] An additional factor behind scrapping the song was a technical defect in the original recording. As with Real Love, a 60-cycle mains hum can be heard throughout Lennons demo recording. However, it was noticeably louder on Now and Then, making it much harder to remove.[citation needed] Throughout 2005 and 2006, press reports speculated that McCartney and Starr would release a complete version of the song in the future. On 29 April 2007, the Daily Express reported that the song might be released to coincide with the Beatles catalogue being released for the first time via digital download.[2] Additional reports circulated that same year[3] that McCartney was hoping to complete the song as a Lennon–McCartney composition by writing new verses, laying down a new drum track recorded by Ringo Starr,[4] and utilising archival recordings of Harrisons guitar work. In April 2008, The Sun reported that there have been discussions about finishing Now and Then.[5] From there, the story was picked up and repeated by a number of music and entertainment media sources. The only (unofficial) available recording of the song is Lennons original demo. In February 2009, the same version of Lennons recording was released on a bootleg CD, taken from a different source, with none of the buzz which hampered the Beatles recording of the song in 1995. The overdubs added in 1995 by the other
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 19:11:49 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015