Son of ‘fifth Beatle’ George Martin goes behind Now And Then – the Fab Four’s last ever song
“I’VE got this song, what do you think?”
With that intriguing question from Paul McCartney, so began another magical mystery Beatles adventure for Giles Martin.
It was the moment the producer son of the producer father, “fifth Beatle” George Martin, became involved with The Fab Four’s last ever song.
Macca was telling Giles about Now And Then, which, as I write today, is here, there and everywhere.
He thought of the John Lennon demo, handed over by his widow Yoko in 1994, as unfinished business because he, George Harrison and Ringo Starr had attempted to complete it but came up short.
Giles, for his part, was only too happy to help the great man get the job done at last — and was sworn to secrecy.
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“The funny thing about The Beatles is the way they work,’ he says. “Or the way WE work as I’m involved now.
“We do stuff and, if it’s crap, we shelve it and no one need ever know.
“It’s not even mystique. There’s no marketing plan where we go, ‘What we need for next year is a new Beatles record.’
“And I’m sure Yoko didn’t think like that. I’m sure she just thought, ‘This is a really beautiful tune written by John and, if anyone should have it, it should be them.’”
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It’s incredible to think that Now And Then, featuring all four Beatles, is set to become their 18th UK No1 single.
Recorded now and then, the wistful Lennon ballad arrives more than 54 years after their 17th chart topper, The Ballad Of John & Yoko.
Its release a week ago has unleashed a fresh wave of global adulation for Britain’s greatest pop exports and it comes with a fascinating back story.
With that in mind, I headed to Abbey Road — where else? — to meet Giles, 54, in his office at the studios where The Beatles recorded nearly all their stellar output under the calm influence of his dad.
“I know Paul and he has an amazing memory. I’m sure it bothered him that they never finished it,” he tells me over a cup of builders’ tea, the sort the band were always partial to.
“It’s taken time for a genius like him to realise that The Beatles was the best collaborative thing he ever did.
“Whenever I talk to him, including during work on Now And Then, his insistence on respecting the other Beatles is paramount.”
It’s fair to say that the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership remains unrivalled more than 50 years after it ended.
“Paul knows he’s never going to find another John Lennon,” says Giles. “There’s not another John Lennon in the world.”
Getting Now And Then done, achieving Macca’s long-held ambition, owes a huge amount to a long-haired New Zealander likened by Giles to a “wizard” from The Lord Of The Rings.
Emile de la Rey and his team pioneered audio technology for Peter Jackson’s fly-on-the-wall 2021 documentary series Get Back which allowed them to demix vocals and instruments from mono recordings.
So McCartney could employ the same AI programme to separate Lennon’s singing from his piano playing on a scratchy late Seventies cassette.
The demo tape also included two other songs which were finished for their multimedia Anthology, Free As A Bird and Real Love, leaving Now And Then, which Giles calls “the best of the three”, languishing in a cupboard somewhere.
Nearly 30 years later, Macca was able to just keep the parts of Now And Then he needed from those ’94 sessions including Harrison’s guitar.
And with a little help from his friend and old bandmate Ringo, he added crystal clear Lennon vocals, a guitar solo, bass, drums, harmony singing and strings.
“This project was all Paul. It was his chance to go back and ‘work’ with John,” says Giles.
“I know he misses him and I know he misses working with him.”
He continues: “You’ve got someone, who happens to be Paul McCartney, and he happens to have been in a band with his best mate, who was John Lennon.
“There was a falling out, as everyone knows, but it wasn’t about their friendship. It was based on finance and business, nothing like the Gallagher brothers or The Everly Brothers.
“It was unresolved though and John got shot ten years later — a relatively short period of time.”
Giles says the Get Back footage, filmed in 1969, shows that Lennon and McCartney were still close even if, a year later, they went their separate ways amid talk of frustration and acrimony.
“You can see that Paul and John still needed each other,” he affirms. “Both George and Ringo seemed more isolated.”
Time, they say, is a great healer so when it came to finishing Now And Then, there was huge determination by the two surviving Beatles to honour the two who left us too soon. Giles says: “Everything Paul and Ringo did for this, they were thinking about John and George, without any question. That was on their minds more than anything else.”
He dismisses the belief that Harrison thought Now and Then was “rubbish” and suggests that the quiet Beatle’s concerns were more about the sound quality.
Since 2006, when father and son Martin co-produced The Beatles’ sound collage Love, Giles has been one of the chief custodians of the band’s precious legacy.
He masterminded 50th Anniversary remixes of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, Abbey Road and Let It Be as well as working on audio for the Get Back films.
Last year, he was able to use the revolutionary AI technology to replace Revolver’s crude stereo mix with a sparkling makeover.
Giles is hugely aware of the historic significance of those original recordings and is humble in his endeavours. “I take the Morris Minor to pieces. I prepare the engine, polish the wheels and put it back together again,” he says.
“It’s still the Morris Minor but it may drive a little bit better. The Beatles were genuinely good!”
Now, to coincide with Now And Then, he and Sam Okell have prepared expanded 50th anniversary reissues of 1962-1966 (The Red Album) and 1967-1970 (The Blue Album).
More on those to come but first, Giles continues the story behind the song everyone is talking about.
“Paul played me what he’d started working on from the ’94 demo plus the extras he’d already done — new bass, piano, the guitar solo. Then we discussed whether to do more things with it.”
They agreed to write a Beatles-style string arrangement of the sort Giles’s late father George was famous for.
They brought in arranger Ben Foster to assist and recorded musicians at Capitol studios, Los Angeles, who thought they were working on a McCartney solo project.
“We started off with a 22-piece string section,” says Giles. “But eventually I cut it down to eight for most of the song — a double string quartet of four violins, two violas and two cellos.
“I was thinking, ‘What would dad have done?’ And I know he would have said, ‘You have to serve the song.’
“So yeah, if I wanted to rip off my dad, do it for Now And Then by The Beatles.”
Also in the mix are sampled “oohs” and “aahs” from Beatles classics Eleanor Rigby, Because and Here, There And Everywhere.
Giles admits: “Paul was reticent about that, understandably so, because he didn’t want some gimmicky thing.
“But I just thought, ‘The Beatles would do oohs here and I can’t get The Beatles to do them because two of the oohs are no longer with us.’
‘It’s how the older Beatles might sound’
“So I said to Paul, ‘Let me just try it because I think it will sound right.’ He liked the idea in the end — it works for the song.”
As to whether Lennon’s lyrics such as “I miss you” refer to his former bandmates, Peter Jackson is convinced that they are.
But Giles says: “That’s what they might feel like now but Paul would never talk to me about it, so who knows?”
Of the finished product spanning four minutes and eight seconds, he adds: “Now And Then does sound like a Beatles song but not one from back in the day.
“It’s more how a Beatles song would sound now because they’re older. We didn’t try to hide that.”
So what about the verdict from the most important listeners?
“Paul was just really happy, as was Ringo,” replies Giles. “For me, that’s the job done. If everyone else hates it, it doesn’t really matter because they’re The Beatles.”
He holds huge admiration for the affable drummer and says: “I sat with Ringo in London and we listened to it.
“He looks amazing, very fit, and he has such a love of it all. His passion is infectious and he is very generous in his support.
“He’s always been like that. He’s The Beatles’ conscience. It’s as if they look at Ringo and go, ‘Maybe we’re being arseholes.’ He has that look.” As for the love of Lennon’s life, Yoko, Giles reports; “She loves it, too.
“She’s in her eighties and is just happy to hear John’s voice as it was again. And it’s a John song.”
He also reserves praise for the two sons who lost their fathers, Sean Ono Lennon and Dhani Harrison.
“They’re both very good musicians but it’s a big thing to step into Beatles world,” he says.
“Any comments they make are really valid and it’s a blessing having them around.”
Not only has the last Beatles song, Now And Then, appeared as a single backed by their first hit, 1962’s Love Me Do, but it is also the final track on an upgraded reissue of the 1967-1970 compilation, aka The Blue Album.
Across that and 1962-1966, The Red Album, there are now 21 extra tracks to make a total of 75. Among worthy new inclusions are I Saw Her Standing There, Tomorrow Never Knows, Dear Prudence, Blackbird and Glass Onion. They were always fabulous collections because they rounded up so many great non-album singles — She Loves You, I Want To Hold Your Hand, We Can Work It Out, Paperback Writer, Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, Lady Madonna and Hey Jude among them.
Giles says: “For people of my generation, the Red and the Blue albums are Beatles albums, not compilations.
“I know the running orders of Red and Blue better than those of Revolver or Rubber Soul.”
While the new Blue album mostly uses recent but pre-Peter Jackson mixes, the whole of Red benefits from the AI separation wizardry.
Giles says of those early songs: “I probably wouldn’t have been able to mix them a year ago or maybe even six months ago.
“A really good example is Twist And Shout which had guitar and drums all on the left-hand side and vocals on the right-hand.
“Now, we have drums in the middle and guitars on the side and it gives you a much better sound.” Another marvel, reports Giles, is Day Tripper — “You can really hear that Ringo is whacking the drums now.”
“The technology has been a revelation,” he continues. “They sound like 23-year-olds in a room, having a good time, as opposed to a 50-year-old record being played on your dad’s stereo.”
Before we part, there’s one nagging question left. Is Now And Then really the last Beatles song or are there hidden gems in the archives waiting to be fully realised?
“There might be but it wouldn’t be The Beatles,” he answers emphatically.
“Now And Then wouldn’t be The Beatles had they not sat down in ’94 and worked with George. It wouldn’t be all four of them.
“That’s his rhythm guitar playing which gave us the structure to base the song around.
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“On top of everything else they’ve achieved, The Beatles are lucky that their last ever song sounds like their last ever song.”
It’s been a long and winding road — paved with music gold,
EXPANDED 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITIONS
THE BEATLES 1962-66
(The Red Album)
★★★★★
