Magical Memories Tour: The Beatles/"Now and Then"
I've always thought it fortunate that The Beatles never reunited during the time when all four members of the band were still alive. It was clear that people never wanted them to have moved on, but move on they did. Still, they recorded on each others' records, wrote songs for each other, made the occasional live appearance with two group members together, fueling those reunion rumors.
So my feelings about the newly released 'last Beatles song,' "Now and Then," are a mixed bag. It's much the same reaction I had to the two 'new' Beatles songs that were released as part of The Beatles Anthology, "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love." I don't dislike them, there are elements of all the songs I like, and it's very cool to hear how smoothly digital technology was employed to create a sound that was up to modern studio standards. I like "Real Love" much better than "Free as a Bird" but overall the songs are of a piece for me. They create feelings of warmth that are like slipping into a warm tub of nostalgia for a time and place that was transformative for us all, arming us against the sea of troubles that seek to transform us yet again.
It also obviously reminds us of the departed, of those who can no longer be with us. I think of my mother and father, who both have passed, and various other friends and relatives. I think of the famous and the infamous as well as those who never made it into the spotlight yet influenced those who did in ways that are nothing short of miraculous. I think of George Harrison, whose work I found endlessly fascinating, and whose solo work has only grown in stature as the years have gone by without him.
And I think of John Lennon, a performer whose work I admire greatly and whose life was cut short by gun violence back in 1980, when it was still a shocking thing. Because all of these post-Beatle era new songs have come from demo recordings of Lennon, they all feature his voice in a distant, reverb-y way that he favored, and they come across as somewhat ghostly. One of the ways that "Now and Then" is a technological improvement is that Lennon's voice is a bit less reedy, more robust than on "Free as a Bird" or "Real Love." On those tracks, it always sounded a bit like the living Beatles threatened to play over Lennon's vocals at points in the production. But on "Now and Then" it sounds like a group that was all recorded in a modern studio and combined, which is how most records get made these days.
When John Lennon was shot, on December 8, 1980, I was a student at Boston's Berklee College of Music. I had just attended a concert put on by one of the faculty in October to celebrate Lennon's fortieth birthday, and it seemed impossible when I first heard the news on the radio in my dorm room on Boylston Street. It simply couldn't have happened. But as the airwaves filled up, first with announcements of the breaking news and then with an endless loop of the music of John Lennon and The Beatles, reality sank in. I knew that people around me were sad, and I had to get out on the street. I may have heard on the radio that people were congregating at Boston Commons as they were congregating in New York City and other locations around the world, but in any case I made my way outside and down to the Commons.
Sure enough, there were groups of people there, gathered around groupings of candles on the ground, surrounded by prayers and well wishes and people who were gathering to sing Lennon songs. I had never experienced anything like it before, and it seemed like there was some of the same energy, albeit in a sad way, that motivated people out onto the streets in the sixties and the seventies. As the seventies dawned Lennon warned us that "the dream is over" and we all moved on to new dreams. But his death at the start of the eighties was a brutal reminder that the world where they'd give peace a chance was just a crazy dream some of us had.
Lyrically, "Now and Then" is pretty minimal, similar in its directness and simplicity to some of his early solo work, like "Love" and "Oh My Love." The real heart of the song, the thing that makes it tick as a nostalgia bomb is the lyric:
Now and then
I miss you
Oh, now and then
I want you to be there for me
Who among us hasn't had this silent supplication, this prayer in the middle of the night? Who hasn't wished for an absent parent, love, friend, coworker, counselor, pastor, or other person who was important in our lives to be here now, to help us make sense of this time and place and of the turns our lives have taken? It's so very little, really, and in fact the song itself is slight--not one of the greatest Beatles songs or Lennon songs. But what would we give for The Beatles to be here for us, in the way they've always been, and that is the gift that has been given with this record.
Of course, Paul McCartney has always been given to creating happy endings, to put the capstone on a record or an era. Unhappy with the sessions for Let It Be and the final result he made certain the band recorded Abbey Road with its Side Two medley providing the funeral for The Beatles. Fifty years later the Let It Be sessions are re-edited into a new film by Peter Jackson and if the ending isn't quite exactly happy, it is a far cry from the way that many remembered it, including Paul.
McCartney seems to have been on a bit of a magical memories tour lately, and who can blame him? His visit to Liverpool and the sites of some of the songs and events in his life broadcast on James Cordon's program seemed to evoke real feelings of warmth in Paul. I certainly wouldn't criticize Paul for indulging in his memories--he approaches the end of his life, and it has been an extraordinary one by any measure. It feels genuine, a true feeling of homecoming rather than any kind of a legacy play.
As the world descends into madness and the years roll by, it would be wonderful to have old friends, relations, and colleagues reappear to offer their thoughts, their feelings, their vibe. Maybe just a firm, grounding hug is all it would take to set us back on course, to make us feel like human beings again. Now and then, Paul and Ringo miss their old friends, as we all do, and wish they could be there to talk about music, or what's going on in the world. To have a pint, take the piss, and maybe even strike up a tune or two on a battered acoustic guitar.
More Beatles at NDIM:
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