The Beatles - Now and Then

[With so few projects in the works I would have preferred to hold this post off until next month but I felt it was time sensitive enough to post as soon as it was ready.]

 

Back when I first started my Beatles-What If blog I had a comp that was inspired by this article. This is actually what got me rolling on the whole alt-Beatles timeline thing. But I was never happy with my results and the comp went through a few different iterations. I used several John demos to flesh the album out including Now and Then but the poor quality of that demo and other elements kept the project from being anywhere near satisfactory. When I reorganized the site in 2010 my Now and Then album was replaced with the Anthology highlights disc and the Lennon & McCartney album.

 

Now with the release of the finished version of Now and Then I felt compelled to revisit the project. The quality that the current technology allowed them to achieve is astounding. I still think the song itself is the weakest of the three songs they worked on but it is listenable and enjoyable and it does grow on you the more you hear it. and it does feature all four Beatles so I'm not complaining. Even the weakest of songs by the Beatles is better than some of the best by others. So I reopened the project and reconsidered some choices and swapped the Now and Then demo with the finished track and ended up with a tight 35 minute album with one bonus track that I felt was worthy of sharing. Enjoy.

Tracklist

01 Flaming Pie

02 Real Love

03 Dehra Dhun

04 Grow Old With Me

05 Thinking of Linking

06 King Of Broken Hearts

07 All Those Years Ago

08 Beautiful Night

09 Free As A Bird

10 Now And Then

11 Ain't She Sweet

Bonus Track

12 Stand By Me

Reality Notes

I used several suggestions from the original article but rejected more than I kept. Only Flaming Pie features only one Beatle but Paul plays everything on it and the lyrics are Beatle related. I also prefaced it with the soundbite of John telling the flaming pie Beatles name origin. All the others have at least two or more fabs and most come from around 1980.

Real love and Free as a Bird are the anthology versions. Grow Old With Me is a John demo and was included on the tape delivered by Yoko but was rejected by the three due to it's subject matter. It was later enhanced with an orchestral score by George Martin and appeared on the John Lennon Anthology box set.

George's Derha Dhun is an All Things Must Pass outtake which I prefaced with a bit from the Anthology ukulele jam and might have Ringo on drums (sounds like him and he seemed to remember it during the jam). Also from George is All Those Years Ago which has Ringo on Drums and Paul on background vocals along with Linda and Denny Laine .

Thinking of Linking comes from the acoustic Anthology jam. I edited parts of the two takes into one solid take. Ain't She Sweet is from the garden ukulele jam that I edited in John's vocal from a solo session outtake of the same song to create another track with all four Beatles. In the last iteration of this album I created two medleys from the ukulele jam and the acoustic jam but they never really worked.

King of Broken Hearts is a Ringo tune with a fine slide solo from George. Beautiful Night is a Paul song with Ringo drumming.

I took the suggestion from the article and segued Beautiful Night into Free as a Bird by way of syncing the snare hits before the false ending on BN with the opening snare hits on FAAB but unlike the article I did not return to BN before the false ending on FAAB.

 

Stand By Me comes from a 1974 session that happened while John was producing Harry Nilson's Pussycat album. After the session ended Paul showed up and a jam session occured with John, Harry, Stevie Wonder, Paul (on drums) and others. Sadly Ringo, who's kit Paul was playing, went home for the evening. The session itself did not produce much worth listening to more than a few times, This snippet was the peak moment.

The cover photo was found online to which I added the cloud background.