Final Beatles song a testament to their bond

The 20th century’s greatest romance.

That’s how the late Derek Taylor once described the Beatles, the band for whom he served as press officer during the height of their world domination.

The description feels apt but elusive. Taylor could be referring to the epic romance that existed between the Beatles and the world. He could also be describing the romance that existed between the members of the band.

That’s part of the magic of the Beatles story. They were singing to each other as much as they were singing to the world. Even (especially?) after they split up in 1970, they couldn’t resist communicating with each other in song.

Paul McCartney took a dig at John Lennon in “Too Many People” (“You took your lucky break and broke it in two”),

John upped the ante with “How Do You Sleep? (“The sound you make is muzak to my ears”), and Paul sought rapprochement with “Dear Friend.” Later, the messages became more veiled, but they never went away.

It’s probably best to hear the new Beatles single, “Now and Then,” in the context of that musical conversation.

Initially recorded as a pianoand-vocal home demo by Lennon in 1977, “Now and Then” was part of a four-song demo that Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, gave to McCartney in 1994, when the surviving Beatles were looking to record together for the Beatles’ “Anthology” project.

They completed “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” but scrapped “Now and Then,” because George Harrison disliked it (although it’s not fully clear whether Harrison’s objection was to the song itself or the poor audio quality of Lennon’s demo).

For nearly three decades, however, McCartney could not shake his obsession with the song. He periodically spoke of his desire to finish it.

When filmmaker Peter Jackson’s team developed machine-learning technology to separate bits of audio for the Beatles’ 2021 “Get Back” documentary series, McCartney asked Jackson to apply the technology to “Now and Then.”

The result is both a sonic and artistic miracle. Where Lennon sounds distant and disembodied on “Free as a Bird,” in a way that only magnifies the fact that he was no longer with us, he sounds astonishingly present and vulnerable on “Now and Then.”

McCartney does remarkable work on the track: replicating Lennon’s original piano performance, doubling Lennon’s vocals on the chorus, laying down a Harrison-like slide-guitar solo and contributing some characteristically melodic bass work.

He also reshaped the arrangement, cutting out a meandering bridge and emphasizing the yearning and hope in what had been a melancholy Lennon demo.

What exactly is the source of McCartney’s obsession with the song? It helps to know that the last time Lennon and McCartney saw each other in person, Lennon tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Think of me every now and then, old friend.”

Giles Martin, the co-producer of “Now and Then,” has described the song as “kind of a love letter to Paul.”

Lennon wrote the song during a period when he and Ono talked about creating a stage musical about their lives, which never got past the planning phase.

It’s possible that Lennon wrote the song to Ono to convey how much he longed for her during their estrangement from 1973-1975. But it’s also possible he was telling McCartney, in a way that he could never tell him face to face, that he missed their friendship and creative partnership.

Artists aren’t always sure of their own intentions. It took McCartney decades to realize he’d written “Yesterday” about his mother, whom he lost to breast cancer when he was only 14.

The important point is that “Now and Then” represented something deep for McCartney. A final chance to commune with Lennon and delve into the mysteries of a powerful relationship that the public never fully understood.

Lennon did a lot to contribute to those public misconceptions. In his post-Beatles years, he often suggested that he didn’t give McCartney much thought, yet those close to him say that he talked about McCartney incessantly.

Lennon told reporter David Sheff in 1980 that he “never actually felt a loss” when he and McCartney stopped writing together, yet on multiple occasions he privately expressed an interest in collaborating again with his former partner.

With “Now and Then,” we’re getting their final collaboration. In the scope of the Beatles’ epochal catalog, it’s likely that the song will be remembered as a mere footnote.

But it’s a beautiful footnote.