The official music video for “Now and Then,” the new and supposedly final Beatles song, has premiered on the band’s official YouTube channel.
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Directed by Lord of the Rings and The Beatles: Get Back director, Peter Jackson, the music video offers up an emotional journey through the Fab Four’s history, combining photos and archival footage from a variety of sources with new scenes of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in the studio.
[RELATED: Hello, Goodbye: The Beatles’ “Last Song,” “Now and Then,” Has Arrived]
The video begins with footage of McCartney, Starr, and the late George Harrison working together during their mid-1990s reunion for The Beatles’ Anthology project. Next, is a scene of John Lennon watching a sunset, as a film clip of the young band in vintage swimming attire appears and then a brief recent shot of McCartney singing in the studio.
A succession of various film clips follows, including footage from the 1990s reunion, McCartney recently playing bass in the studio, and Lennon when he was living in New York City in the 1970s.
We then see new combined footage of Starr and McCartney singing backing vocals, apparently in different studios, followed by a snippet of The Beatles at Shea Stadium
More video magic ensues, as new footage of McCartney and Starr singing is combined with film of Harrison and Lennon from the 1960s performing and having fun, to create a virtual Beatles reunion.
Next, McCartney and producer Giles Martin are shown overseeing the string arrangement that was added to the track, and then, footage of Lennon is edited into a scene of the string section in the studio, which he seemingly is conducting.
As the video proceeds, we see the different Beatles members lifted from various film sources interacting virtually with each other. For example, there’s a clip of modern-day Paul sitting down flanked by his younger self and a young Harrison doing a mock strip tease, and present-day Starr and late-1960s Ringo are seen playing drums next to each other.
In addition, there’s a segment featuring recent footage of McCartney playing bass and Starr on drums, as various members from the 1960s joke around behind and between them.
A montage of combined footage and photos of The Beatles from various years is then presented generally in backward chronological order, from the 1990s reunion to photo shoots from the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band era and the late 1960s, to a clip from the “Paperback Writer” promo film to the group at Shea Stadium and the heyday of the Beatlemania craze, to a glimpse of the band playing a club during its early days.
As the video moves toward its finale, photos of The Beatles when they were teenagers and children scroll across the screen, superimposed over black-and-white footage of screaming fans. The clip ends with a scene from A Hard Day’s Night of The Beatles onstage, taking a bow.
As previously reported, “Now and Then” was built around a demo that Lennon recorded in the late 1970s and that McCartney, Starr, and Harrison worked on during the 1990s but didn’t complete. McCartney and Starr then revisited the track recently and finished it with help from the same audio technology director Jackson employed on The Beatles: Get Back docuseries, which was used to cleanly lift Lennon’s vocals off the demo recording.
“Now and Then” was released as a digital single on Thursday, November 2, while various physical versions arrived today on vinyl, CD, and cassette.
Photo from YouTube
