"What was really exciting for me was watching Paul's total respect for his band members": Giles Martin tells the inside story of the final Beatles song, Now And Then

Get back indeed. On November 3, 2023, more than 25 years after the release of two new Beatles songs for the group’s multi-part Anthology documentary series (Free As A Bird and Real Love, which featured surviving members Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr lending accompaniment to a sparse John Lennon 70s-era demo), came what is being described as the last Beatles song ever: Now And Then.

During the Jeff Lynne-led reunion sessions in 1994, Paul, George and Ringo spent a little time laying down some ideas over John’s Now And Then demo before work ceased. Decades later, using film director Peter Jackson’s de-mixing technology, which allowed clear separation of John’s vocals on his rudimentary demo, Now And Then, produced by Paul McCartney and Giles Martin with additional production by Jeff Lynne, is given the grandiose ‘Fab Four’ treatment.

Using George’s acoustic and electric guitar from the aborted mid-90s session, alongside newly recorded contributions from Paul and Ringo, and a sparkling string arrangement by Paul, Giles Martin and Ben Foster, The Beatles returned one last time. Martin tells us the story of how this last ever Beatles track came to be.

Can you lay out the back story behind Now And Then? 

Giles Martin: Well, this was a track that was worked on during the Free As A Bird sessions that I wasn’t aware of. The song was in Paul’s vaults because Paul, George and Ringo worked in Paul’s studios when they recorded it way back then. And through the birth of the technology that we worked on during Get Back [The Beatles’ 2021 documentary series] and the de-mix technology, Paul originally went to [director] Peter Jackson to get him to work on stuff for his concerts so John [Lennon] would be singing with him on I’ve Got A Feeling during his concert.

And I think from there, Paul asked Peter whether he would look at Now And Then, and he [Paul] started working on it in his studio and came up with the arrangement and came up with things like the guitar solo.

What shape was the track in when you received it? How much had George Harrison recorded on those sessions? 

Well, George had laid down acoustic and electric guitar, both rhythm guitar tracks. The guitar solo section in the track was written and done by Paul before he came to see me. It was done as kind of a tribute to George. It’s Paul being George, if you like [laughs], and he was thinking: “Okay, what would George have done here?” And actually, that ran through the whole sessions, where it was pretty obvious that Paul was really missing his friends and trying to respect them and do what they want him to do.

Was it you or Paul who asked Ringo to play drums?

I said to Paul: “We should get Ringo to re-record the drums,” and he agreed. I think he’d already spoken to Ringo, or Ringo was aware he was doing the track. I phoned up Ringo on a Tuesday night or something, and Ringo says: “I know why you’re phoning me. You want me to play drums on a Beatles song.” And I said yeah. So Paul must have already phoned him.

I had the multitracks to send him. He went: “Fine, I’ll listen to it and I’ll play on it and send it back to you.” It’s as simple as that. He said: “I’ll play it twice, I’ll listen to it, and I’ll just play along with the song.” He doesn’t play with a click track, he just listens to a song and he plays it.

Was there anything that Paul had done at the initial sessions with Jeff Lynne that was kept, or did he redo everything?

I think we kept his acoustic guitar; he played acoustic guitar with George, and I think there’s video of him doing it with George. He re-did the bass and piano.

Were you at those sessions when he was redoing the bass and piano, or were you only in attendance with Paul for the string sessions?

No, I wasn’t. The sessions he was doing, he did that in his own studios and he did those things before he came to me. I think I said to him: “It sounds beautiful, Paul.” And he looked at me and he gave me his look, like: “What are you going to say now?” I said: “Well it might be a good idea if we have a look at doing some strings, and maybe some BVs [background vocals], and then we improved the quality of John’s voice; I think I made it a bit more sparse at the beginning.

I had a bit of a bigger entry to it originally, a bit more of a Free As A Bird-type entry. But I thought that once John’s voice is clear and clean and he sounds so great and it’s unmistakably john, let’s start with John.

Was much of John’s piano kept from his demo when you were able to separate it using the de-mixing technology, or did Paul replay it?

Paul re-did the piano, because it had to be re-done because the format of the song changed. But I think that’s okay. If anyone’s going to replace a Beatle, it should be a Beatle.

Getting to work on what is now being said to be the last Beatles song ever, there had to be both excitement and trepidation. What did you want to do, and what things did you want to avoid?

Well, okay, I had Paul for a start. What we talked about was trying not to be cheesy with anything. I did the string arrangement; I’m ripping off my dad [original producer and ‘fifth Beatle’ George Martin] quite a lot [laughs]. But it’s not a Beatles tribute record, it’s a Beatles record. So we were concerned about just doing the song justice.

What was really exciting for me was watching Paul’s total respect for his band members in the process of doing this. The strings are quite staccato; they’re quite Eleanor Rigby, if you like, and Paul was like: “Okay, the rhythm that’s being played by George, can you just isolate that? I want to hear what George is doing. I want to make sure that we are playing exactly the rhythm he is playing and that we follow that on the record.” Because as you pertinently asked the question: what’s George doing on this? So it’s really important that his contribution is really respected and that we’re not washing things out with too much colour.

Your father was a master at string arrangements. What were some of the things that, consciously or unconsciously, you brought to that string arrangement giving a little bit of a nod to his brilliance?

Well, economy, really. It’s funny, we did actually start off with a bigger string section in the room. On the track, it’s just a double string quartet in the end, apart from the guitar solo, which has a bigger, more sort of Golden Slumbers vibe. There’s like a line in the guitar solo which is basically similar to the viola line that he put in Golden Slumbers.

There’s a line at the very end of the guitars which is a triplet line, and which is a very I Am The Walrus triplet-type thing. They’re going all the time, so there are conscious nods. But, as Paul says, I’m not trying to do stuff for the sake of it. I’m doing stuff because it’s The Beatles. And if we’re going to do that, if you’re going to do that with any artist, you must do it with the artist that did in the first place.

But none of the string players there knew exactly what this was exactly for, correct?

It was a strange day, but yeah, why would anyone even suspect it was for a Beatles session, is the question. It’s funny, the best way of hiding something is putting it in plain sight.

Fans were hoping for a Rubber Soul box this year, and it’s been rumoured that Anthology could be in the works too. Can you give us any hints on what could be coming next? 

‘No’ is the answer [laughs]. But I can absolutely honestly say I’m not working on anything at the moment. That’s all I can say.