Saw this tweet first thing this morning.
So I tuned in WXPN, streaming the fine public radio station out of Philadelphia, a few minutes early and waited eagerly for 10 a.m. — 9 a.m. Green Bay time — to roll around.
“The last new Beatles song has arrived,” host Mike Vasilikos said at the top of the hour, opening his midday show.
He shared a little background on how “Now and Then” came to be — recorded solo on cassette tape by John Lennon in 1977, and that tape shared by Yoko Ono with the other Beatles in the early ’90s. Then he played a short audio clip with Giles Martin setting the stage for the song, discussing its production.
After that, a couple of minutes after the top of the hour, WXPN played the last new Beatles song without any further introduction.
And then …
“You’ve heard the new Beatles song for the first time on XPN and it is out in the world now,” Vasilikos said. “It’s an honor and a pleasure to share this moment with the XPN community.”
What struck me was the question posed by WXPN’s social post. How many of us had come together at the top of that hour to listen to the radio — or to stream it somewhere — to share in what seemed like a big moment in music history?
Saw tweets from people deeply touched by hearing a new Beatles song for the first time, people deeply appreciative for having that experience in their lifetime, which was cool.
But there are many of us — like me — for whom this was not a first-time thing.
My first memory of hearing a new Beatles song for the first time might have been “The Long and Winding Road” in the spring of 1970. I was 12. There must have been some hype around that release, but I don’t remember it.
My most vivid memory of hearing a new (to me) Beatles song for the first time was in the summer of 1976, when “Got to Get You into My Life” hit the radio in support of their “Rock ‘n’ Roll Music” compilation LP. I was 19. Blew me away. Loved its big sound. Still one of my favorites. (“Got to Get You into My Life” was of course on the “Revolver” LP released in 1966, but I’d never had that record.)
The next year, 1977, — and you really had to be there to know how absurd it all was — brought lots of speculation that a band named Klaatu and its self-titled debut LP were actually the Beatles, reunited and recording new songs under a fake name. It wasn’t.
Anyway.
As for the two other so-called new Beatles songs that eventually came along — “Free as a Bird” in 1995 and “Real Love” in 1996, both also written by John and finished by the rest of the band after his death — I have no idea when I heard them for the first time. Oh, they were hyped, but I really didn’t dig either one.
Here’s how they made “Now and Then.”
What I think of “Now and Then” doesn’t matter. Some love it. Some don’t.
But I’m not convinced that “Now and Then” is the last new Beatles song.
There’s just too much hype (and, yes, too much money to be made) to think they won’t unearth another unfinished song and finish it as long as Paul and Ringo are still with us, still capable of doing so.
This was just a day in the life for Beatles fans. A big day, but just a day.
Doesn’t feel as if it’s time yet for that final chord.
