They are calling it “The Last Beatles Song.” It started as a John Lennon demo called “Now and Then” that Yoko Ono had given to Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr during the work on The Beatles Anthology in the 1990s. While Paul, George, and Ringo did work on the song at that time, it was ultimately determined the demo was in too bad a shape to turn into a completed song.
But now, almost 30 years later, the song has been finished, using new technologies that weren’t available at that time. In fact, they were only developed in the last few years by none other than director Peter Jackson while he was working on the recent Beatles documentary series The Beatles: Get Back. This new technology was able to separate John Lennon’s vocals from the piano on that demo, which enabled the surviving Beatles to turn the “Now and Then” demo into a full-fledged Beatles track, which debuted today.
It’s only fitting then that Peter Jackson directed the accompanying music video for “Now and Then,” which is comprised of archival footage of the band from their ’60s glory days.
READ MORE: The Weirdest Animated Movies Ever Made
Here is what Peter Jackson had to say about the video, in a statement:
“We wanted the music video to bring a few tears to the eye, but generating emotion using only archive footage is a tricky thing. Fortunately, the simple power of this beautiful song did a lot of the work for us. I have genuine pride in what we made, and I’ll cherish that for years to come.”
Peter Jackson’s “Now and Then” music video will be available tomorrow, November 3, on Disney+. Disney+ also has a new 12-minute documentary short about the making of the song and the video called “Now and Then – The Last Beatles Song,” which is already streaming on Disney+. And you can listen to the song itself now:
Sign up for Disney+ here.
The Worst 2010s Movies, According to Letterboxd Users
According to the users of the cinematic social network Letterboxd, these are the worst movies released during the 2010s.