The Fab Four reunite in Peter Jackson's video for Now and Then.
The Fab Four reunite in Peter Jackson's video for Now and Then.
OPINION
In Sir Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the Lord of the Rings, uncanny spirits from beyond the grave chase our brave hobbit heroes to hell and back. Much the same effect is achieved in the director’s video to the new Beatles single, Now and Then – only instead of Ringwraiths from Mordor, Jackson has unleashed creepy reanimated footage of John Lennon and George Harrison trying to foist a new Fab song on the general public. In both cases, the results are equally chilling and deserve to be tossed into the cracks of doom.
As a partly posthumous postscript to the most glorious catalogue in pop, Now and Then has received a largely positive response. The track is based on an original 1977 John Lennon demo, spruced up by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr after the original vocals were isolated using artificial intelligence. Rolling Stone heralded it “the Beatles’ final masterpiece”. A more lukewarm Daily Telegraph deemed the effort “sweet but dreary”.
Unfortunately, the track takes on a ghoulish new dimension when accompanied by Jackson’s video. As music, it is easy to buy into the fantasy that this is another Beatles classic, put together by John, Macca and the gang on a wet Wednesday at Abbey Road. But far from encouraging us to believe it’s an authentic artefact, Jackson has chosen to go in the opposite direction. He is determined to remind us a) John and George are very much dead and b) he’s going to use all his visual trickery to pretend the opposite is the case.
Jackson has form when it comes to colourised necromancy. He utilised it in his 2018 World War 1 documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old – raved over in the moment, never spoken of since. He went one further, making his four-part Disney+ Beatles documentary Get Back. There, he utilised AI to improve the colour grading of the original reels.
Neither of which are comparable to the sheer ghastliness of Now and Then. That a rough ride lies ahead is made clear when, 35 seconds in, Jackson fades from mid-1990s McCartney and Harrison to a silhouette of John Lennon staring at the sunset. An old image of The Beatles in wide-brimmed hats materialises to his right, followed by present-day McCartney singing his verse.
A scene from the beginning of the video.
Newly restored footage of the band on stage.
This is not great – but it gets even worse. Jackson goes on to blend 2023 vintage McCartney and Starr, clearly sending in their bits from separate continents. Then, at one minute 48 seconds, and slightly too late for Halloween, the full horror. The four Fabs standing in a row – digitally integrated in a style that suggests that not only is the music from the Seventies, but so is the computing technology.
First is George Harrison – wearing the creepiest smile Jackson could locate in the archives. Alongside stands 21st-century Ringo Starr, wearing a neon t-shirt with his face on it, followed by a low-key 81-year-old McCartney.
And finally, laughing and pointing at himself, a mid-Seventies Lennon – smiling inanely yet with a blankness behind his eyes. You wonder if, back when the clip was filmed, he felt a sudden chill. A premonition that years after he had passed, he would find himself trapped in a digital netherworld next to Grandpa Ringo disguised as a human emoji.
Jackson has been getting his excuses in early. He didn’t want to make the video and did so only because “The Beatles don’t take no for an answer”.
“My lifelong love of The Beatles collided into a wall of sheer terror at the thought of letting everyone down,” he writes. “I’d never made a music video before and was not able to imagine how I could even begin to create one for a band that broke up over 50 years ago, had never actually performed the song, and had half of its members no longer with us.”
Paul and Ringo took his “no” as a “yes” and taped separate performances for Jackson to use. Apple, their record label, sent 14 unused hours documenting the mid-1990s Anthology sessions. Sean Lennon, John’s youngest son, and Olivia Harrison, George’s widow, passed on previously-unseen home recordings. Finally, “fifth Beatle” Pete Best shared out-takes of the puppyish group in leather suits. “The earliest known film of The Beatles and never seen before”, says Jackson of the imagery, which appears towards the end of the video.
1960s George Harrison jamming with the 1990s version.
Young Ringo with Old Ringo.
The new footage was “a game-changer”. “I could see how a music video could be made. Actually, I found it far easier if I thought of it as making a short movie,” he said.
It’s a good line – though the end product doesn’t support Jackson’s claim he’s made a film rather than a pop promo. His true error, however, was to try to “capture” the spirit of the Beatles. Jackson says he found Now and Then emotional. But, having spoken with George’s son Dhani, he felt he should showcase their playful side. Hence, the hellscape centrepiece of the video in which Lennon and Harrison, who both died relatively young and in tragic circumstances, are shown clowning around for the cameras.
“At their core, they were irreverent and funny, and the middle section should capture that spirit, “writes Jackson. “We needed to laugh at The Beatles and laugh with them. They were always sending themselves up – and the more seriously other people took them, the more they would clown around.
Previously unseen footage, filmed in a Merseyside church hall in 1962.
The Beatles, as seen at the end of the video.
“Luckily we found a collection of unseen outtakes in the vault, where The Beatles are relaxed, funny and rather candid. These become the spine of our middle section, and we wove the humour into some footage shot in 2023. The result is pretty nutty and provided the video with much-needed balance between the sad and the funny.”
Sad and funny? Try ghoulish with gongs attached. Watching, all you can think is: why? Why resurrect George in his shiny Hello, Goodbye pirate costume alongside 1995-vintage Harrison six years before his death from cancer? Why have Paul McCartney wedged between his younger self and George mugging for the camera – taking dignity away from the musicians in both timelines? Oh and why, why, why put a ghostly Lennon dancing spasmodically from the podium as a string section buffs up the new track? Forget the White Album – this is the Barrow Wight Album.
Yes, John, Paul and the gang were pranksters. But always on their terms and never as the punchline. Jackson has turned the joke on the audience, on himself – most of all on The Beatles. If you haven’t seen the video, steer clear. It will ruin a song that, on its own terms, lands as a wonderfully poignant farewell from a band that deserve better than the digital purgatory into which Jackson has cast them. On behalf of Beatles fans everywhere, the only appropriate response is: we hates, we hates it forever.
