A few days ago, ‘The Beatles’, which means Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, released Now and Then external link , hailed as the new ’latest’ single by the band that no longer exists since 1970. What it is, is an assembly of vocals from a 1977 demo tape by John Lennon, 1995 recordings by George Harrison, and additional parts played more recently by Paul McCartney (who contributed bass guitar and a guitar solo, if I understand correctly the explanatory video external link ) and Ringo Starr (on drums), plus orchestration, timid background vocals, and various other effects.

The result, if we set aside the magic brought by technology developed by Peter Jackson - a New Zealander who has dedicated his last few decades almost exclusively to reviving the splendors of 20th-century Britain -, is simply the sum of its parts, or perhaps even less than that: Lennon’s voice is increasingly distant, thinned by the necessary treatment to render usable a tape that was a simple cassette demo, suffocated by Giles Martin’s strings (can we have a Now and Then Naked?), and ‘supported’ by McCartney’s eighty-year-old voice. Perhaps suggestive from the conceptual point of view of ’now vs. then,’ but redundant and inappropriate to listen to.

Free as a Bird and Real Love, despite Jeff Lynne’s enthusiastic production, sounded much more Beatle-esque than this new track. I would be more interested in listening to applying these new technologies to updated versions of those two songs - which at least George Harrison approved for release - than to this even more nostalgic operation.