While on tour in Australia last week, Paul McCartney chatted with BBC Radio via phone about the new Beatles song, “Now and Then,” which features an archival vocal performance by the late John Lennon lifted from a 1978 cassette demo tape.
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During his interview with BBC Radio 1 host Clara Amfo, McCartney recounted the story of how the song came together with help from modern audio technology, which helped bring clarity to the raw recording of Lennon’s voice and with the addition of tracks that McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison added in the mid-1990s, plus new parts that McCartney and Starr laid down recently.
[RELATED: Report: “Now and Then” on Track to Become Beatles’ First No. 1 U.K. Hit in 54 Years]
“It was kind of magical doing it,” McCartney noted, particularly getting to hear Lennon’s voice as he and Starr recorded their new parts.
“You could imagine he was just in the next room in a vocal booth or something, and we were just working with him again,” the 81-year-old Beatles legend explained. “So it was joyful. It was really lovely, ’cause we hadn’t experienced that for a long time, obviously. And then suddenly, here we were, working with old Johnny.”
McCartney also addressed reports that suggested that “Now and Then,” was created using artificial intelligence, which he noted wasn’t really the case.
“What we were doing was just cleaning up John’s voice, just using … the technology to take away the background,” McCartney maintained, “so we … could put him in the mix and we could lift his volume without bringing up all the background noise. So it was a good use of the technology.”
The technology that McCartney was referring to was, as previously reported, developed by director Peter Jackson’s technical team to help enhance the audio taken from archival sources that was used in The Beatles: Get Back docuseries.
Near the end of the interview, McCartney was asked what he hoped people who perhaps never listened to The Beatles before would take from “Now and Then.”
“First of all, just that it’s an amazing technological thing,” he said. “And, you know, just a loving feeling. ’Cause that’s often what we were trying to do with our records. We were trying to spread love.”
McCartney also noted that he feels the new song “is very poignant, ’cause it’s John talking about, ‘I miss you,’ and stuff like that,” adding, “So, I think emotion … would be the key word for people to take away from it. Emotion.”
You can listen to the whole interview at BBC.co.uk.
“Now and Then” is available now via digital and streaming, and also can be purchased in a number of physical formats. McCartney wrapped up his Australian tour over the weekend with a concert in Gold Coast.
His next show takes place on November 14 in Mexico City. Tickets are available via StubHub, where orders are 100% guaranteed through StubHub’s FanProtect program. StubHub is a secondary market ticketing platform, and prices may be higher or lower than face value, depending on demand.
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