Knighted musician of the Beatles, Sir Paul McCartney made his fans gape in awe when he shared that a last Beatles song was in the works. The Beatles decade has passed the torch of their exceptional music so much so that even five decades later, the Beatles fandom is only growing, and historically spiritual locations stand named after the Liverpool-based band.
Last month, Paul McCartney opened up in a BBC Radio 4 Today episode with Martha Kearney, and spoke about a future where AI can be used to make a possible final Beatles record.
“It's kind of scary but exciting because it's the future. We'll just have to see where that leads," he said.
The interview took place before the release of Sir Paul McCartney's latest photo book, Eyes Of The Storm. The book is a collection of portraits that Sir Paul McCartney himself took between late 1963 and early 1964. This time period was significant as it occurred just one year after the band's debut and marked their rise to recognition.
Talking at the National Portrait Gallery, in London, Sir Paul McCartney revealed that he worked with some AI to do a final Beatles record by identifying and separating John Lennon’s voice from an old record, possibly from a 1978 song composed by Lenon called Now And Then.
He credited the work behind the upcoming reminiscent track to The Beatles: Get Back director Peter Jackson.
“He was able to extricate John's voice from a ropey little bit of cassette. We had John's voice and a piano and he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine, 'That's the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar'”, Sir Paul said.
“That one's still lingering around," said Sir Paul McCartney about the impending final Beatles song
In 2012, in the BBC Four documentary about producer Jeff Lynne, Sir Paul McCartney shared that this song was long pending and expressed his enthusiasm for doing it with producer Jeff Lynne.
“That one's still lingering around. So I'm going to nick in with Jeff and do it. Finish it, one of these days." he noted.
According to BBC, the song goes back to 1994, when Sir Paul McCartney received a cassette from Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, titled "For Paul", which was recorded by John Lennon in his New York apartment before his unfortunate death.
Music producer Jeff Lynne extricated and released two songs from the cassette, Free As A Bird and Real Love, in 1995 and 1996 respectively. While work did begin to release Now And Then as well, Paul McCartney told Q magazine that George Harrison didn’t like the vocal quality of Lennon’s voice in the cassette, so the rest of the members decided to drop it as well.
“It didn't have a very good title, it needed a bit of reworking, but it had a beautiful verse and it had John singing it, [But] George didn't like it. The Beatles being a democracy, we didn't do it."
Decades later, thanks to technology, we await, a rather final goodbye to the Beatles music. Sir Paul McCartney described the process of producing, what would be, the last Beatles record.
“So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles' record, it was a demo that John had [and] we were able to take John's voice and get it pure through this AI. Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you some sort of leeway," he said.
With technology advancing and AI coming in to solve some of the most unsolvable human problems, the Beatlemaniacs can soon expect a final, nostalgic trip down the Beatles era and reverberate their last song with Lennon's unforgettable voice.