Beatles Reunion Song Myths #2: ‘Now And Then’ originally intended to be third song

And how ‘Now And Then’ finally came to be

(Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of articles about myths about the Beatles ‘reunion’ songs. Read the first article.)

In the ‘90s, Paul McCartney, George Harrison , and Ringo Starr – the Threetles as the press dubbed them – considered a series of John Lennon home demos as ‘reunion’ songs. They ultimately released ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ on the Anthology 1 and 2 albums, respectively. 

Most fans believe that ‘Now And Then,’ which Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr completed under the Beatles moniker in 2023, was originally slated to be the third reunion song on Anthology 3. However, that is not true.

Below is the story of ‘Now And Then’ in the ‘90s and how the song ultimately came to be released in 2023.

Group originally passed on ‘Real Love’ in favor of ‘Now And Then’

After completing ‘Free As A Bird’ in 1994, the Threetles reassembled in 1995 to work on a second song. That song was originally intended to be ‘Now And Then,’ not ‘Real Love.’ In fact, the group had passed on ‘Real Love.’

“They could never find the original tape,” Harrison said of ‘Real Love’ in 1996. “The tape that we had from Yoko seemed a pretty far down the line copy. But when we first got the cassettes from Yoko back in '93, I actually preferred ‘Real Love’ as a song; I thought the melody was more obvious.”[1] (Editor’s Note: It was actually 1994 that Ono gave the cassettes.)

While Harrison personally preferred ‘Real Love’ to the other songs Ono provided, there were serious issues with the Threetles completing the song. The quality of the tape was terrible. Lennon’s home demo had other issues that made it technically challenging in the extreme.

“The problem was that it was this bad copy, and it had this tambourine that was out of time and real loud,” Harrison said of ‘Real Love.’ “That was the only reason we passed on it originally.”[1]

Most of effort cleaning up tapes devoted to ‘Now And Then’

Producer Jeff Lynne worked with Marc Mann for two weeks at the end of 1994 cleaning up the home demo tapes for the second Beatles ‘reunion’ song. The intent was that McCartney, Harrison, and Starr would go into the studio and complete a second new song in early 1995.

Mann said that almost all of his time with Lynne was spent working on ‘Now And Then,’ with the belief that it would be the second single.[2] (Interestingly, Mann said the exact opposite nearly 30 years later.) In fact, the duo only turned their attention to ‘Real Love’ when they had time left over.

“As we were finishing up the first song, we were very excited, saying to ourselves, ‘Yes, this is working! We got it!'” Mann said. “The funny thing is, though, Jeff had only told me there was one song to work on.”[2]

Why did Lynne hold back ‘Real Love’? Lynne felt that the issue that the tambourine presented would be insurmountable.

“So [Lynne] says, 'We've got a couple of days left, let me play you this other one that I didn't think we'd be able to do anything with because it had tambourine on it,’” Mann recalled.[2]

Lynne played the song. “’But I don't think we can do anything with it because of the tambourine,’” Lynne said, according to Mann. Mann asked if he could try.[2]

Just two days before Lynne was scheduled to leave for London, the two “burned the midnight oil” and cleaned up ‘Real Love.’[2]

In studio, ‘Now And Then’ quickly abandoned in favor of ‘Real Love’ 

When Lynne got into the recording studio with McCartney, Harrison, and Starr, the group started to work on ‘Now And Then.’ However, they quickly abandoned work on the song.

Jon Jacobs assisted McCartney on a number of projects over the years. Jacobs worked on the 1990s recordings with Geoff Emerick, who engineered many of the Beatles records in addition to the ‘reunion’ songs.

“’Now and Then’ was the first thing we looked at,” Jacobs recalled nearly 30 years later. “But we probably only played around with it for a day, maybe two days. We might have had a go at it, but we didn’t spend long on it. We started it, and then quickly moved on to ‘Real Love.’”[3]

Lynne agreed that, while the initial intent was to complete ‘Now And Then,’ the group did not focus on the song for long.

"There was one afternoon messing with it, but a lot of words weren't there,” Lynne said in 1995. “We did a rough backing track but didn't finish. It was a very sweet song, and I wish we could have finished it…It was just that the words weren't complete (it has barely more than a refrain), so the decision was made to do something already complete."[4]

Elsewhere Lynne said, “We had a go at it, but there were a lot of words that hadn’t been completed on it. ‘Real Love’ was actually a complete, finished song, so we decided then we’d go for that one because of the time frame.”[5]

The “time frame” driver was Ringo Starr going on tour with his All-Star Band that summer. Starr would be unavailable once he started preparing for the tour. 

“I told the boys, this year, this is it for me,” Starr said after the group ultimately completed ‘Real Love.’ “I'm doing the tour. I’m going out.”[6]

Third song in doubt

With ‘Real Love’ moved up to be the second single, ‘Now And Then’ appears to have been the only Lennon home demo that the group had left as a potential third single. While Ono also gave the song ‘Grow Old With Me,’ the Threetles decided not to work on that song for a variety of reasons.[7]

McCartney was asked shortly before the release of the Beatles Anthology documentary and first album in the fall of 1995 whether there would be a third single. He sounded uncertain, at best, about completing ‘Now And Then.’

“There’s one other piece that I like the beginning of, but we’d have to do a hatchet job on it,” McCartney said. “So we did the two that were the two favorites. And there is one that we’ve done a little bit of work on, but I’m not sure we’re going to bother with that one.”[8]

McCartney continued, after singing the start of the song, “That beginning bit’s great, and then it just goes a bit crummy. We all decided that it’s not one of John’s greatest songs. So that we’d have to manipulate all of that, which is just a little bit more difficult.”[8]

Starr, meanwhile, expressed some reservations about doing three successive Lennon songs.

“We also did another song that we didn't finish because that's not how the Beatles worked,” Starr said. “We didn't just do John songs or Paul songs. We needed a couple of George tracks, a couple of Paul's, and my track, to make it more real.”[9]

A seemingly incomplete explanation

While Starr’s explanation makes sense, McCartney saying that ‘Now And Then’ wasn’t finished because the song needed significant work doesn’t ring entirely true at first blush. The group had chosen ‘Free As A Bird’ in part for the very reason that it was unfinished.8 Additionally, McCartney stated that working on ‘Real Love’ wasn’t as satisfying because the song was complete.

“The thing for me that was not quite as much fun in the recording of 'Real Love' was it was finished,” McCartney said. “It had all the words and the music. So I didn't really get to input, which, like we, the other three of us, have been able to input on 'Free As A Bird'. So it made it more like a Beatles session. This was like, more like we were side men to John, which was joyful, and it was good fun, and I think we did a good job.”[10] 

It would seem that this would have made the unfinished ‘Now And Then’ more appealing. Of course, the song needed considerably more work than just completing a few lines of lyrics as in ‘Free As A Bird.’ As McCartney noted, it would require a “hatchet job.”

The Beatles Anthology documentary, updated and re-released in 2025 on the 30th anniversary, contained a previously unreleased clip of McCartney talking about ‘Now And Then’ in 1995. He added context to what held the group back from completing the song.

“It needed a lot of rewriting. People would have had to be very patient with us,” McCartney said. “And Yoko, for instance, would have had to allow us to chop it up a bit…It needs so much work that we're a bit terrified to get around to it.”[11]

The third single

One thing is clear. Capitol Records wanted a third single to support sales of Anthology 3. In fact, Lou Mann, senior vice president of sales at Capitol, said in early September of 1995 that Anthology 3 would contain another new song that had not yet been recorded.[12]

Later that month, the fanzine Beatlefan reported that ‘Grow Old With Me’ would be the third single.[13] While the magazine had correctly identified the first two singles in advance of their announcement, this, of course, turned out to be incorrect. McCartney dismissed the idea of the group working on ‘Grow Old With Me’ in an interview that fall.[8]

Lynne gave some additional insights in an interview in the fall of 1995 as to why the group didn’t complete ‘Now And Then.’

“I mean, at first, it was tempting to think we could do a whole record, but there were never any plans to,” Lynne said. “When we did the third one – actually, the second one, which became the third one (the unfinished ‘Now And Then’) – there was a little bit of talk about maybe doing some more tracks, even. But time just didn’t permit it, really.”[5]

Lynne said in late 1995 that he wasn’t aware of any plans to finish ‘Now And Then.’ He also indicated that he didn’t think the song would be finished any time soon.

“I didn’t think there was ever any plans to finish it, but who knows?” Lynne said. “As far as I know, there was no real plans to use it yet, maybe way down the road.”[14] 

Beatles recording engineer Geoff Emerick, who worked with the group for the ‘90s reunion songs, expressed his hope that ‘Now And Then’ would be completed. “It would be nice to get it finished," Emerick said in 1995. “Paul's up for it.”[15]

The end of ‘Now And Then’…for the moment

As Emerick stated, McCartney clearly hoped to finish ‘Now And Then.’ The Beatles Anthology 3 album was slated for release September 17th 1996 but was ultimately pushed back to October 8th.[16] There was certainly time to work on the song. McCartney even joked about the group’s song-a-year pace.

“We did the first track last February [in 1994], we did the second track this February [in 1995],” McCartney said. “As we were saying goodbye to everybody we said, ‘See you next February!’ Our engineer, Eddie Klein, who runs my studio, said, ‘If we keep going for twelve years we’ll have an album.'”[17] 

While the record company wanted a third song, completing ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘ Real Love’ hadn’t been easy. Starr talked about the emotional difficulty of working on the songs.

“That's enough, really, the two tracks,” Starr said in April of 1996. “Because it just was difficult for us to do new music, the three of us.”[18]

Still, Jacobs was originally told around that same time in 1996 to get ‘Now And Then’ ready to be worked on in the studio. Jacobs and Mann spent a significant amount of time preparing the song, such as addressing tempo issues, as had been done for ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love.’

“Then, around the end of the month or beginning of May, Jeff came in and just said, ‘Paul just called. We’re not doing it,’” Mann recalled many years later.[3]

By the summer of 1996, the official word came. Capitol President Gary Gersh confirmed that there would be no third new Beatles song on Anthology 3.[19]

Beatles democracy

In late 1996, McCartney expressed that he had wanted to finish the song. He also gave some additional details as to why it didn’t happen.

“There was one more that we didn't do, which was a pity,” McCartney said. “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 wanna do it.”[20] 

In 1997, McCartney expanded further on why ‘Now And Then’ was left unfinished.

“I actually wanted to do it on Anthology 3,” McCartney said. “But we didn't all agree…There was only one of us who didn't want to do it. It would have meant a lot of hard work. The song would have needed a lot of re-writing, and people would have had to be very patient with us.”[21] 

McCartney was even more blunt talking about the song the following year. “George didn’t like it. The Beatles being a democracy, we didn’t do it,” McCartney said.[22]

Fifteen years later, McCartney gave Harrison’s candid thoughts about the song. 

“There was another one that we started working on, but George went off it,” McCartney explained. “‘Fucking rubbish this is.’ ‘No George, this is John.’ ‘It’s still fucking rubbish.’ Okay then. So that one that one is still lingering around.”[23]

In 2023, shortly before the release of ‘Now And Then,’ Starr confirmed that Harrison had nixed the song. “When it came to [‘Now And Then], we thought – George mainly thought – well, two is enough,” Starr said.[24] 

Thinking about the song, now and again

McCartney, however, clearly continued to entertain the idea of eventually finishing ‘Now And Then.’ He mentioned the song intermittently in the ensuing years.

“When we did ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love,’ there was another track under consideration for us to work on but we didn’t get around to it, so I wonder if there will be a chance in the future,” McCartney said in 2002. “I wouldn’t mind doing it.”[25]

Ono was asked about the possibility of McCartney and Starr finishing the song in 2005. “I sent those songs to them when the situation was quite different,” Ono said. “Now that George is gone, I don't know if the same would apply. I will consider the possibility, that is, when I get the call.”[25]

However, Ono gave particular significance to ‘Now And Then,’ explaining why she provided the song.

“I thought this was a song which would release people from their sorrow of losing John,” she said. “By listening to the song, they will eventually be able to release their sorrow, and arrive at an understanding that, actually, John is not lost to them. People who loved John are growing with John – by carrying their memory of John in their hearts.”[25]

McCartney mentioned ‘Now And Then’ again in 2012. “I’m going to nick it with Jeff [Lynne] and do it, finish it one of these days,” McCartney said slyly.[23]

A song over four decades in the making, finished

Peter Jackson’s work on the 2021 documentary miniseries Get Back breathed new life into the possibility of finishing ‘Now And Then.’ For the series, Jackson’s company had developed a technology that would provide a considerably cleaner version of Lennon’s vocals on ‘Now And Then.’  

“[Jackson] was able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette where it had John’s voice and a piano,” McCartney said in 2023 prior to the song’s release. “He can separate them with AI. They tell the machine ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar.’ And he did that.”[26] 

But did McCartney and Starr ultimately finish ‘Now And Then’ under the Beatles moniker in 2023 even though Harrison had not approved of the song? Not necessarily.

First, it doesn’t seem that, at least in 1995, Harrison had entirely counted ‘Now And Then’ out. In additional footage released of the updated Beatles Anthology documentary in 2025, Harrison said, “We're just gonna, like, finish [‘Real Love’], work on that one, and then get that one done, sort of go back to the other one [‘Now And Then’] next time.”[11]

Additionally, in a way at least, it seems as if Harrison did give his approval to finish the song.

Back in 1997, shortly after the Anthology period, Harrison and his wife, Olivia, were visiting their son, Dhani, in Rhode Island. Harrison stopped by a store and was taken by a clock made from recycled materials. It said in black and white Scrabble letters ‘Now’ and ‘Then,’ with two buttons and a dominos piece making a plus sign between them.

“He was attracted to it for some reason,” Olivia said.[27] Harrison placed the clock in a summer hut, or “Russian dacha,” on the grounds of the couple’s home. 

After Harrison passed away in 2001, the clock remained in the same place over the next twenty-plus years. One day in 2022, Olivia decided to replace the battery and clean the clock up.

“I took out the old rusty battery, cleaned it up a little bit, stuck a battery in,” Olivia said. “Lo and behold, it worked. Put it on the mantelpiece. Phone rings. It’s Paul, reminding me of this third song that was on the cassette tape with ‘Real Love’ and ‘Free As A Bird.’ He said, ‘The song, it’s called Now And Then.’ I’m standing there with the phone…looking at the clock that said, ‘Now And Then’, and I was sort of dumbfounded.”[27]

Olivia subsequently removed a picture that had been in the clock, replaced it with a picture of the Beatles, and sent the image to McCartney.

“Paul felt happy about it. So did I,” Olivia said. “We all did. It just seemed to be handed to us from another time…It just felt like he was saying, ‘It’s OK.’ It felt like approval.”[27]

When the song was released, Olivia emphasized Harrison’s technical concerns with the song.

“Back in 1995, after several days in the studio working on the track, George felt the technical issues with the demo were insurmountable and concluded that it was not possible to finish the track to a high enough standard,” Olivia said. “If he were here today, Dhani and I know he would have whole-heartedly joined Paul and Ringo in completing the recording of ‘Now And Then.’”[28]

‘Now And Then’ was finally released in November of 2023 as “the last Beatles record.” It was more than 40 years after Lennon made a home demo of the song and 28 and a half years after McCartney, Harrison, and Starr first worked on it.

REFERENCES

[1] Magical History Tour: Harrison Previews 'Anthology Volume 2.’ Billboard. March 9, 1996. p.87.

[2] Hurwitz, Matt. Studio Magic: Turning Lost Lennon Tapes Into Beatle Treasures. Good Day Sunshine. Issue #80. August 1996. p.80.

[3] Hurwitz, Matthew. The Creation of The Beatles’ Last Song and the Rebirth of Red and Blue. Sound & Vision. February 9, 2024.

[4] Rense, Rip. It is the Beatles! San Francisco  Gate. November 18, 1995.

[5] Rense, Rip. ‘Recording with the Fab Three! Producer Jeff Lynne Talks About Sessions for 'Free As a Bird.' Beatlefan. Issue #97. Vol. 17. No. 1. Nov-Dec 1995.

[6] Q&A with Ringo with Ringo. Beatlefan. Vol. 16, No. 5. July-August, 1995.

[7] The One Reunion Song the Beatles Didn’t Finish…and the Real Reason Why. Grow Old With Me. September 5, 2025.

[8] Kozinn, Allan. McCartney on the 'Anthology' - The Inside Story on the Film, Album and Reunion. Beatlefan. Issue #97. Vol. 17, No. 1. November-December, 1995.

[9] Ringo Starr interview. Q Magazine. #111. December 1995.

[10] Beatles Anthology. 2003. Extras. Disk 8. 8 minutes and 14 seconds.

[11] Beatles Anthology. 2025 Episode 9. Approximately 44:00 minutes.

[12] Capitol Has Its Work Cut Out For Beatles Anthology. Billboard. September 2, 1995. p.68.

[13] Beatlefan. #96. September-October, 1995.

[14] Jeff Lynne Interview. Good Day Sunshine. October 20, 1995, #79.

[15] Plans Gel For The Beatles' Anthology Vol. One And Beyond. ICE Monthly CD Newsletter. December 1995.

[16] Beatlenews roundup. Beatlefan. #101 July-August 1996.

[17] Flanagan, Billy. Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, and all the Other Princes. Musician. August, 1995.

[18] VH-1   April 6, 1996. Via Ringo Starr Remastered Archives 1994-1996.

[19] Beatlenews Roundup. Beatlefan. #101. July-August 1996. p.4.

[20] Paul McCartney Pops Round. Q Magazine. 121. October 1996.

[21] Bradshaw, Nick. The Return of Macca. Sunday Express. Boulevard Magazine. May 4, 1997.

[22] Yates, Robert. Cash for Questions. Q Magazine. January 1998. p.18.

[23] Mr. Blue Sky: The story of Jeff Lynne and ELO. 2012.

[24] Ringo Starr interview. Associated Press. September 28 2023.

[25] Rense, Rip. One More Beatles Song, or Should They Just Let It Be? Washington Post. August 19, 2005.

[26] Paul McCartney interview. BBC Radio 4’s Today. June 13, 2023.

[27] Why George Harrison approved of the Beatles’ Now And Then. Mojo. November 21, 2023.

[28] The Last Beatles Song. Beatles.com. November 2, 2023.