1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:03,643 [crew member] Two, take one. Silent turnover. 2 00:00:03,667 --> 00:00:05,976 - [George] Are you ready, Ringo? - [Paul] Come on. We're doing it. We're on. 3 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:06,917 - One. - Two. 4 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:08,041 - Three. - Four! 5 00:00:08,125 --> 00:00:09,875 [John] Which key is it in, really? 6 00:00:10,542 --> 00:00:12,142 - [Paul] Ringo. - [John] George is tuned up. 7 00:00:12,166 --> 00:00:13,709 - [George] Oh, hi there. - [Paul] John. 8 00:00:13,792 --> 00:00:15,601 - [John] I'm ready to sing for the world. - [crowd cheering] 9 00:00:15,625 --> 00:00:16,976 [John] I hope we passed the audition. 10 00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:18,208 [indistinct] 11 00:00:18,291 --> 00:00:20,184 [Paul] What did it sound like with the bass doing a funny thing? 12 00:00:20,208 --> 00:00:22,166 Keep that one. Mark it "fab." 13 00:00:22,250 --> 00:00:24,458 - [John] Music. - [cheering fades] 14 00:00:25,500 --> 00:00:28,750 [Paul] Making good music in a band is all about chemistry. 15 00:00:29,750 --> 00:00:34,083 The way our four very different personalities combined in the Beatles 16 00:00:34,166 --> 00:00:35,709 was something very special. 17 00:00:35,792 --> 00:00:37,125 [crowd cheering] 18 00:00:38,041 --> 00:00:41,458 [Paul] When we lost John, we knew that it was really over. 19 00:00:43,166 --> 00:00:49,542 But in 1994, amazingly, an interesting opportunity arose. 20 00:00:49,625 --> 00:00:51,959 We could make more music together. 21 00:00:54,709 --> 00:00:57,041 [George] If we were to do something, the three of us, 22 00:00:57,125 --> 00:00:59,542 as interesting as it may be, 23 00:00:59,625 --> 00:01:02,125 to have John in it is the obvious thing. 24 00:01:03,166 --> 00:01:07,458 I was talking to Yoko and she said, "Ah, I think I've got a tape of John." 25 00:01:08,959 --> 00:01:13,291 [Paul] We were pretty excited. A new John song. Amazing. 26 00:01:13,792 --> 00:01:18,583 [George] To hear John's voice… That's a thing that we should cherish. 27 00:01:18,667 --> 00:01:23,291 And I'm sure he would've really enjoyed that opportunity to be with us again. 28 00:01:23,375 --> 00:01:27,875 [Ringo] We could use John and try and make a record. 29 00:01:27,959 --> 00:01:31,375 It was the closest we'll ever come to having him back in the room. 30 00:01:40,375 --> 00:01:42,792 [horn honks] 31 00:01:43,709 --> 00:01:44,834 [horns honking] 32 00:01:44,917 --> 00:01:48,375 [Sean] I do remember living at the Dakota with Dad and Mom. 33 00:01:48,458 --> 00:01:50,083 There's this impression 34 00:01:50,166 --> 00:01:54,625 that my dad stopped doing music for a while to raise me, 35 00:01:54,709 --> 00:01:58,542 which I think is partially true in terms of him not touring 36 00:01:58,625 --> 00:02:02,041 and not fulfilling any major record label obligations. 37 00:02:02,125 --> 00:02:04,458 But he was always playing music around the house. 38 00:02:04,542 --> 00:02:06,125 He was always making demos. 39 00:02:06,208 --> 00:02:10,166 And I do remember him recording into these tape cassette recorders. 40 00:02:10,834 --> 00:02:14,917 Mom had these handful of songs that my dad hadn't finished, 41 00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:17,333 and she gave them to the other Beatles. 42 00:02:23,959 --> 00:02:26,625 [Paul] George and Ringo came down to my studio. 43 00:02:26,709 --> 00:02:28,625 [birds twittering] 44 00:02:28,709 --> 00:02:30,792 - Nice day. - [Ringo chuckles] Fabulous day. 45 00:02:31,625 --> 00:02:33,750 [Paul] We listened to the track. 46 00:02:33,834 --> 00:02:36,000 [piano playing] 47 00:02:36,083 --> 00:02:40,417 There's John in his apartment in New York City, 48 00:02:40,500 --> 00:02:43,125 banging away at his piano, doing a little demo. 49 00:02:43,792 --> 00:02:46,083 "Is it something we shouldn't do?" 50 00:02:46,917 --> 00:02:49,333 Every time I thought like that, I thought, "Wait a minute. 51 00:02:49,417 --> 00:02:52,125 Let's say I had a chance to ask John, 52 00:02:52,208 --> 00:02:56,000 'Hey, John, would you like us to finish this last song of yours?'" 53 00:02:56,083 --> 00:02:57,250 [chattering] 54 00:02:57,333 --> 00:03:01,709 [Paul] I'm telling you, I know the answer would have been, "Yeah." 55 00:03:01,792 --> 00:03:03,667 He would have loved that. 56 00:03:04,333 --> 00:03:06,792 [piano playing] 57 00:03:06,875 --> 00:03:10,375 [John on tape] ♪ I know it's true ♪ 58 00:03:10,458 --> 00:03:12,959 [piano continues] 59 00:03:13,041 --> 00:03:16,458 ♪ It's all because of you ♪ 60 00:03:18,166 --> 00:03:20,333 [Ringo] It was very strange when we started 61 00:03:20,417 --> 00:03:25,917 that there's only three of us after all those years and all that life. 62 00:03:26,000 --> 00:03:28,041 John, do you wanna put the kettle on? 63 00:03:28,667 --> 00:03:32,750 [people chattering, laughing] 64 00:03:32,834 --> 00:03:35,000 [playing "Norwegian Wood" off-key] 65 00:03:35,083 --> 00:03:37,375 - [George] No. - [Ringo, Paul laughing] 66 00:03:41,792 --> 00:03:44,875 [Paul] We did "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love," 67 00:03:44,959 --> 00:03:49,542 and we got a little bit of time left to do "Now And Then." 68 00:03:51,417 --> 00:03:53,834 [Ringo] When we started "Now And Then," 69 00:03:53,917 --> 00:03:58,000 it was very difficult because John was sort of hidden in a way. 70 00:03:58,083 --> 00:03:59,208 [piano playing] 71 00:03:59,291 --> 00:04:03,375 [Paul] In John's demo tape, the piano was a little hard to hear. 72 00:04:03,458 --> 00:04:08,542 And in those days, of course, we didn't have the technology to do the separation. 73 00:04:09,834 --> 00:04:13,625 [John] ♪ That I… ♪ 74 00:04:14,875 --> 00:04:16,208 You know, that's computer stuff. 75 00:04:16,291 --> 00:04:19,583 I was telling you a year ago, Jeff was doing this thing on his computer. 76 00:04:19,667 --> 00:04:23,083 But it opens up a whole other kettle of fish as to... 77 00:04:23,166 --> 00:04:24,291 Can of worms? 78 00:04:24,375 --> 00:04:26,709 But will it open another year of work? 79 00:04:27,375 --> 00:04:32,625 It really brought to the fore, to the three of us, that John's gone. 80 00:04:36,583 --> 00:04:39,250 [piano playing] 81 00:04:39,333 --> 00:04:41,875 [Paul] Every time we wanted a little bit more of John's voice, 82 00:04:41,959 --> 00:04:45,250 this piano came through and clouded the picture. 83 00:04:45,333 --> 00:04:49,166 [John] ♪ It's all because of you ♪ 84 00:04:50,208 --> 00:04:53,875 [Paul] I think we kind of ran out of steam a bit, and time. 85 00:04:53,959 --> 00:04:57,709 And it was like, "Well, I don't know. Maybe we'll leave this one." 86 00:04:59,208 --> 00:05:01,458 [piano playing] 87 00:05:10,667 --> 00:05:11,667 [snaps fingers] 88 00:05:11,750 --> 00:05:13,750 [George] Ah, I don't know what he was doing. 89 00:05:14,333 --> 00:05:15,875 - [all laugh] - [Ringo] He had no idea. 90 00:05:17,000 --> 00:05:19,583 - Okay, see you next year. - See you next week. 91 00:05:21,417 --> 00:05:24,625 [Paul] "Now And Then" just kind of languished in a cupboard. 92 00:05:24,709 --> 00:05:25,709 [door closes] 93 00:05:31,125 --> 00:05:34,792 And then in 2001, we lost George. 94 00:05:35,834 --> 00:05:38,041 Which kind of took the wind out of our sails. 95 00:05:38,125 --> 00:05:40,250 [birds twittering] 96 00:05:42,709 --> 00:05:47,709 It took almost a quarter of a century for us to wait until the right moment 97 00:05:47,792 --> 00:05:50,041 to tackle "Now And Then" again. 98 00:05:55,625 --> 00:05:59,583 With the technology that Peter Jackson and his team 99 00:05:59,667 --> 00:06:04,458 had worked out during the Get Back movie, 100 00:06:04,542 --> 00:06:09,583 he'd been able to separate off certain instruments and voices. 101 00:06:09,667 --> 00:06:11,500 [Peter] During the course of Get Back, 102 00:06:11,583 --> 00:06:15,417 we were paying a lot of attention to the technical restoration. 103 00:06:15,500 --> 00:06:18,250 That ultimately led us to develop a technology 104 00:06:18,333 --> 00:06:23,667 which allows us to take any soundtrack and split all the different components 105 00:06:23,750 --> 00:06:25,834 into separate tracks based on machine learning. 106 00:06:26,417 --> 00:06:29,000 [Ringo] Peter Jackson has the MAL machine… 107 00:06:29,083 --> 00:06:30,893 - Morning, Paul! - …which can just lift anything. 108 00:06:30,917 --> 00:06:32,750 - How are you this morning? - Okay! 109 00:06:33,250 --> 00:06:37,583 [Paul] We thought, "Well, we'd better send John's voice to them 110 00:06:37,667 --> 00:06:39,291 off the original cassette." 111 00:06:41,250 --> 00:06:42,792 [Sean] My dad would've loved that 112 00:06:42,875 --> 00:06:47,208 because he was never shy to experiment with recording technology. 113 00:06:47,291 --> 00:06:48,542 I think it's really beautiful. 114 00:06:48,625 --> 00:06:51,208 [machine warbling, beeping] 115 00:06:51,291 --> 00:06:53,875 [Paul] They said, "This is the sound of John's voice." 116 00:06:53,959 --> 00:06:56,166 [imitating machine beeping] 117 00:06:56,250 --> 00:06:58,125 A few seconds later or however long it took, 118 00:06:58,208 --> 00:07:00,500 and there it was, John's voice. 119 00:07:01,083 --> 00:07:02,208 Crystal clear. 120 00:07:03,959 --> 00:07:06,834 [John] ♪ I know it's true ♪ 121 00:07:09,208 --> 00:07:13,083 ♪ It's all because of you ♪ 122 00:07:14,875 --> 00:07:19,458 ♪ And if I make it through ♪ 123 00:07:19,542 --> 00:07:23,041 ♪ It's all because ♪ 124 00:07:24,333 --> 00:07:28,750 ♪ Of you ♪ 125 00:07:29,333 --> 00:07:32,542 - [Peter] Do it again. - [Ringo] Since, uh, Peter took John off 126 00:07:32,625 --> 00:07:36,208 and gave him his own track, it's like John's there, you know? 127 00:07:36,291 --> 00:07:37,375 It's far-out. 128 00:07:37,458 --> 00:07:42,667 [Paul] So in the mix, we could lift John's voice without lifting the piano, 129 00:07:42,750 --> 00:07:44,875 which had always been one of the problems. 130 00:07:44,959 --> 00:07:48,375 Now we could mix it and make a proper record of it. 131 00:07:48,458 --> 00:07:51,375 - [demo playing through speakers] - I pulled it out, had a listen to it 132 00:07:51,458 --> 00:07:55,667 and thought, "Oh, I could actually do the bass a bit better. 133 00:07:55,750 --> 00:07:57,417 So, why don't I start there?" 134 00:07:58,709 --> 00:08:01,291 [John] ♪ And now and then… ♪ 135 00:08:02,917 --> 00:08:06,542 [Ringo] Paul called me up and said he'd like to work on, uh, "Now And Then." 136 00:08:06,625 --> 00:08:08,417 "What do you think?" "I think it's great." 137 00:08:08,500 --> 00:08:10,875 So, he put the bass on. 138 00:08:10,959 --> 00:08:12,458 He sent the files to me. 139 00:08:12,542 --> 00:08:13,917 I put the drums on. 140 00:08:24,959 --> 00:08:27,166 [Paul] It really brought it on, you know? 141 00:08:27,250 --> 00:08:30,875 And so now we had a track that was really starting to cook. 142 00:08:34,458 --> 00:08:35,458 [music ends] 143 00:08:35,542 --> 00:08:39,625 I'd been vaguely thinking strings might be a good thing. 144 00:08:39,709 --> 00:08:42,417 The Beatles did lots of string things. 145 00:08:42,500 --> 00:08:45,917 You know, "Strawberry Fields," "Yesterday," "I am the Walrus." 146 00:08:48,333 --> 00:08:51,417 We wanted to go to Capitol Studios 147 00:08:51,500 --> 00:08:54,959 'cause that had been EMI, and it was sort of "Beatle-y." 148 00:08:55,834 --> 00:08:57,834 Giles worked up an arrangement 149 00:08:57,917 --> 00:09:01,125 like Giles's dad would have done in the old days. 150 00:09:01,208 --> 00:09:03,792 [chattering] 151 00:09:09,208 --> 00:09:14,667 [Paul] We had to put the music out on the stands for the musicians, 152 00:09:14,750 --> 00:09:17,291 but we couldn't tell 'em it was a new Beatles song. 153 00:09:17,375 --> 00:09:19,291 It was all a bit hush-hush. 154 00:09:19,375 --> 00:09:21,750 We pretended it was just something of mine. 155 00:09:26,667 --> 00:09:28,667 [music ends] 156 00:09:29,417 --> 00:09:32,417 On the new record, there's a guitar solo. 157 00:09:32,500 --> 00:09:35,333 [slide guitar playing] 158 00:09:38,917 --> 00:09:42,458 We had kept George's guitar parts from '95. 159 00:09:43,250 --> 00:09:49,709 And I thought, what I'd like to do is do a slide guitar solo in George's style. 160 00:09:51,542 --> 00:09:53,834 It was really a tribute to George. 161 00:09:55,583 --> 00:09:57,917 And then we started mixing it. 162 00:09:58,792 --> 00:09:59,792 Wow. 163 00:09:59,875 --> 00:10:02,625 This is it. Now it's a Beatle record. 164 00:10:02,709 --> 00:10:04,291 [Ringo through speakers] One, two. 165 00:10:05,709 --> 00:10:08,750 ["Now And Then" playing] 166 00:10:10,250 --> 00:10:14,542 [Sean] It was incredibly touching to hear them working together 167 00:10:14,625 --> 00:10:16,834 after all the years that my dad had been gone. 168 00:10:17,333 --> 00:10:20,041 [John] ♪ I know it's true ♪ 169 00:10:21,500 --> 00:10:22,700 [Sean] It's the last song that 170 00:10:22,750 --> 00:10:26,959 my dad and Paul and George and Ringo will get to make together. 171 00:10:28,250 --> 00:10:32,875 [John] ♪ And if I make it through ♪ 172 00:10:32,959 --> 00:10:36,166 ♪ It's all because ♪ 173 00:10:38,083 --> 00:10:42,208 ♪ Of you ♪ 174 00:10:43,208 --> 00:10:45,834 [Paul] All of those memories come flooding back. 175 00:10:45,917 --> 00:10:51,458 My God. How lucky was I to have those men in my life 176 00:10:52,458 --> 00:10:58,667 and to work with those men so intimately and to come up with such a body of music? 177 00:11:01,959 --> 00:11:07,834 To still be working on Beatles music in 2023, wow. 178 00:11:09,291 --> 00:11:13,959 We're actually messing around with state-of-the-art technology, 179 00:11:14,583 --> 00:11:18,417 which is something the Beatles would've been very interested in. 180 00:11:19,166 --> 00:11:23,083 "Now And Then," it's probably, like, the last Beatles song. 181 00:11:23,166 --> 00:11:27,458 And we've all played on it, so it is a genuine Beatle recording. 182 00:11:27,542 --> 00:11:29,375 [chattering] 183 00:11:31,875 --> 00:11:35,792 [crowd cheering, fades] 184 00:11:37,166 --> 00:11:38,375 [Paul] I'll tell you what. 185 00:11:38,458 --> 00:11:41,625 Why don't you just give me a little bit of his original demo 186 00:11:41,709 --> 00:11:44,291 to sort of hear how he's playing the piano? 187 00:11:44,375 --> 00:11:46,615 - [guitar playing] - [George] That part could be played on, 188 00:11:46,667 --> 00:11:47,834 like, another thing. 189 00:11:47,917 --> 00:11:50,250 - [Paul] Ringo can play it on his drum. - [Ringo] I can. 190 00:11:50,333 --> 00:11:52,000 [Paul] Yeah, tuned tom-toms. Yeah. 191 00:11:52,083 --> 00:11:54,208 - [imitating drum] - [George] We'll come in after this. 192 00:11:54,291 --> 00:11:58,875 [Paul] Yeah. And I'm thinking verse three could be, 193 00:11:58,959 --> 00:12:00,500 like, the intro again, you know? 194 00:12:00,583 --> 00:12:02,250 [Ringo] Start again. [chuckles] 195 00:12:02,333 --> 00:12:05,166 [George yawns] When are we ever gonna get to sleep? 196 00:12:05,250 --> 00:12:08,291 - [Paul] Now, there's a good question. - [George] No rest for the wicked. 197 00:12:08,792 --> 00:12:11,458 - [Paul] DIN, son. Do it now. - [Ringo] Do it now. 198 00:12:11,542 --> 00:12:13,667 [George] Go on then. Back it up a bit. 199 00:12:14,291 --> 00:12:15,542 [drums playing] 200 00:12:15,625 --> 00:12:17,166 [Beatle whistling] 201 00:12:17,250 --> 00:12:19,250 [Paul] Can I just hear John a sec?