The last week has seen the release of the ‘last ever Beatles song.’ For those who thought that happened 53 years ago, a word of explanation. In 1977 John Lennon recorded three ‘demoes’ – just his voice and piano- in his New York apartment on a cassette tape. He chose not to develop them further so, 14 years after his tragic shooting in December 1980, his widow Yoko Ono contacted the remaining 3 band members, offering them the chance to do so and release them as a ‘Beatles’ song. In 1995/6 two of the songs, ‘Free as a bird’ and ‘Real Love’ were recorded, using the instruments and voices of Paul, George and Ringo with the help of the latest technology. Unfortunately, the third, ‘Now and Then’, was of such poor quality to be unusable and the project was abandoned.
Last year, however, with further progress in audio technology and greater ability to extract one strand from a recording brought about by AI, Paul McCartney managed , with the help of film director Peter Jackson, to isolate John’s vocal, making it sound crystal clear. There were also usable recordings of George Harrison, who died in 2001, playing guitar on their initial attempts. With the addition of Ringo’s drumming and Paul’s guitars, plus a small orchestra directed by the son of the Beatles’ producer, George Martin and newly recorded vocals from Paul and Ringo, ‘Now and Then’ was mixed , recorded and released on November 2nd 2023.
Why should this be of any interest to anyone but Beatles fans? Surely, this is just another commercial attempt to breathe new life into the Beatles brand and make them and their families yet more money? Maybe so, but not for me. For a start, I am a Beatles fan. They were part of my upbringing in a way that Bob Dylan- my adult obsession- never was. As a family, like many others, we acted out being the Beatles in our sitting room with our plastic Beatles guitars, and I remember the release of their records clearly. I also vividly remember where I was on the days of both John and George’s deaths. So yes, I am a fan.
Yet, for me, the release of this song goes beyond fandom, even music. I see it as a labour of love which has made me reflect on living in harmony with those who are no longer with us physically.
The theme of recovering and restoring lost words and songs is a common one in art, culture and religion. Sometimes things are lost through misappropriation, sometimes through neglect and decay.
At the moment, as the 400th anniversary of the first folio edition of his plays is commemorated, there are many attempts to recover the words of Shakespeare, lost to many in our time, and bring them to life again, sometimes by taking them off the page and out the theatre into people’s contemporary lives and make them sing again.
They are not the only lost words. A few years go a book with this title was published, accompanied by a CD ‘Spell songs’. Written by Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Jackie Morris, it highlights the many words that have literally disappeared from a children’s dictionary in recent years: ‘Acorn, adder, bramble, conker, dandelion…’etc, words that would have been familiar, even to town dwellers, in my youth. Through the book and CD featuring a group of folk musicians, the authors literally try to ‘conjure’ back these lost words’ , producing beautiful music, as well as heightened awareness, in the process. This verbal degradation mirrors the environmental degradation visible all around us.
The attempt to live close to nature, to ‘harmonise with songs the lonesome sparrow sings’ (Dylan) is a widespread one amongst environmental campaigners and is also important to people of faith. I once heard the Scottish hymn writer and campaigner John Bell refer to pollution and environmental degradation as akin to ‘putting a gag’ over the mouth of creation. In this, he was drawing on the spirituality of St Francis of Assisi whose ‘Canticle of the Creatures’ pictures the natural world as ‘singing’ just by being: ‘All creatures of our God and King/ lift up your voice and with us sing/ O praise Him Alleluia!’ (William Draper’s hymn version of the Canticle) . Human beings, according to Bell, have a responsibility to remove that gag and let creation’s voice be heard. Only that way, said Bell, can those lost words of Francis and others like him be heard. Otherwise they remain just words.
Saints, such as Francis, are for Christians, not just characters in a history book, to be read about and learned from, but have a living presence in what is called the Communion of saints. As we read in the New Testament, referring to characters from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), ‘they died, yet through faith still speak.’ (Hebrews 11.4). Paul McCartney has said he felt his friend’s presence, 42 years on from his death, as he listened to a simple melody and made suggestions for harmony and instrumentation, just as he did in the old days of their songwriting. Christians also take the ‘songs’ of people ‘back then’ – pre-eminently those of Jesus of Nazareth- and bring them to life in the here and now of the church.
Biblical scholars are divided on the NOW and THEN, that is extent to which a) the different words of Jesus recorded in the Gospels are what he really said, and b) he intended to found the church as we know it. To take the second of these two first. It is hard, looking back at the history of the church, with its obvious sins, such as the crusades, the Inquisition, the witch trials and the sheer lack of love on display in churches throughout the world today, to reconcile this Body with the command Jesus gave to his disciples: ‘love one another as I have loved you.’ Yet the church, with all its sins and divisions, remains the only place where the words and actions of Jesus are regularly recalled and acted out, confronting many with their lack of love and half-heartedness, if they would but perceive it. Over the many years of my ministry, I have tried to bring the words and presence of Jesus alive in church, and often failed. Yet every now and then, through the working of his Spirit, I have felt his presence powerfully.
As regards the first, whether the words of Jesus are those he actually spoke, we will never fully know, but I wonder how crucial this is. For me, it’s more of a question of how they are received. When John Lennon sang ‘Now and then I miss you’, it seems unlikely that he was referring to his former bandmates, as he sat in his New York penthouse. More likely, it seems to me, were the words intended for his wife Yoko, even possibly his young son Sean. Yet in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opxhh9Oh3rg) directed by Peter Jackson for the remaining Beatles, the words seem quite appropriate to their earlier partnership and the undoubted friendship, even love, in which they held each other. This is not twisting the meaning, but authentically receiving it afresh.
It’s the same with the words of Jesus then and his followers now. Jesus gives us some words- a melody, so to speak, , eg ‘Love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you,’ and leaves his followers in every generation to harmonise them and fill them out. In that process we discover what he means. At the end of his book, ‘The quest for the historical Jesus’ which surveyed the many attempts to track down the true Jesus over the years, the New Testament scholar and philanthropist Albert Schweitzer, wrote this:
“He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same words: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.”
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