WORLDWIDE PREMIERE OF PETER JACKSON'S MUSIC VIDEO DIRECTORIAL THIS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3 AT 2 PM GMT / 10 AM EDT / 7 AM PDT / 7:30 PM IST
THE LAST BEATLES SONG, “NOW AND THEN,” RELEASED
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2 AT 2 PM GMT / 10 AM EDT / 7 AM PDT/ 7:30 PM IST
Swati Bhat
The final Beatles song, "Now And Then," will be released on Thursday, November 2, as announced last Thursday, October 26. Today, Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe is excited to reveal the details and premiere plans for the song's evocative new music video, directed by Peter Jackson in his maiden excursion into music video production.
The "Now And Then" music video will be released globally on The Beatles' YouTube channel on Friday, November 3 at 2 pm GMT / 10 am EDT / 7 am PDT. The touching and amusing video asks viewers to join John, Paul, George, and Ringo in celebrating The Beatles' eternal and enduring love for one another as they compose the final Beatles song.
Tune in HERE this Friday, November 3 at 2 pm GMT / 10 am EDT / 7 am PDT to celebrate the premiere of The Beatles' "Now And Then" music video.
Speaking about directing the music video, Peter Jackson says:
“When Apple asked me to make the music video, I was very reluctant - I thought my next few months would be a hell of a lot more fun if that tricky task was somebody else’s problem, and I could be like any other Beatles fan, enjoying the night-before-Christmas anticipation as the release of a new Beatles song and music video approached - in 1995, l loved the childlike excitement I felt as the release of Free As A Bird was inching closer. I could have that experience once again - all I had to do was say no to The Beatles. To be honest, just thinking about the responsibility of having to make a music video worthy of the last song The Beatles will ever release produced a collection of anxieties almost too overwhelming to deal with. My lifelong love of The Beatles collided with a wall of sheer terror at the thought of letting everyone down. This created intense insecurity in me because 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. Being a runner was going to be much easier. I only needed some time to think of a good reason to say no to The Beatles, so I never agreed to make the music video for Now And Then (and I still haven't to this day). I informed Apple how concerned I was about the absence of suitable footage. We'd need a lot of rare and unseen film but there's not much... Nothing seems to exist that showed Paul, George, and Ringo working on Now And Then in 1995... There isn't much footage of John in the mid-1970, when he wrote the demo...… I grizzled about the lack of unseen Beatles footage from the ’60s … And they didn’t even shoot any footage showing Paul and Ringo working on the song last year.
A Beatles music video must contain outstanding Beatles footage. There should be no usage of actors or CGI Beatles. Every shot of The Beatles had to be authentic. I had no idea how someone could film a Now And Then music video if they didn't have great footage to work with by this point, and this was far from a weak excuse. My anxiety and insecurity now had good reasons to win and allow me to say no without looking like a chicken.
I knew The Beatles don’t take no for an answer if their minds are set on something - but they didn’t even wait for me to say no. I found myself swept along as they quickly addressed my concerns. Paul and Ringo shot footage of themselves performing and sent that to me. Apple unearthed over 14 hours of long forgotten film shot during the 1995 recording sessions, including several hours of Paul, George and Ringo working on Now And Then, and gave all that to me. Sean and Olivia found some great unseen home movie footage and sent that. To cap things off, a few precious seconds of The Beatles performing in their leather suits, the earliest known film of The Beatles and never seen before, was kindly supplied by Pete Best.
Watching this footage completely changed the situation - 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, so that’s what I did… My lack of confidence with music videos didn’t matter anymore if I wasn’t making one. Even so, I still had no solid vision for what this short film should be - so I turned to the song for guidance. After we had separated John’s voice on the demo tape over a year ago, Giles had produced an early mix of Now And Then. This had been sent to me back in 2022. I loved it. Since then I must have listened to Now And Then over 50 times, purely for pleasure. Now I started listening to it intently for different reasons. I was hoping that ideas or inspiration for the short film would somehow float up from the music. And that began to happen. As I kept listening, it felt like the song was creating ideas and images that started forming in my head - without any conscious effort from me.I teamed up with Jabez Olssen, my Get Back editor, to try and figure out ways the new film footage could be used to support these wispy ideas. It was a very organic process, and we slowly started building little fragments, sliding pictures and music around in different ways until things began to click in. We wanted the short film to bring a few tears to the eye, but generating emotion using only archive footage is a tricky thing. Fortunately, the simple power of this beautiful song did a lot of the work for us, and we finished the first 30 or 40 secs of the film fairly quickly. Having done that, we jumped straight to the ending and tried to craft something that could adequately sum up the enormity of The Beatles’ legacy - in the last few seconds of their final recording. This proved to be impossible. Their contribution to the world is too immense, and their wondrous gift of music has become part of our DNA and now defies description. I realized we needed the imagination of every viewer to do what we couldn’t and have each viewer create their own personal moment of farewell to The Beatles - but we had to gently steer everyone to that place. I had some vague ideas but didn’t really know how to achieve them. Fortunately, Dhani Harrison happened to be visiting NZ at this time. I discussed the ending with him and described one vague idea I’d been toying with. His eyes immediately filled with tears - so that is the way we went. Jabez and I now began thinking about the middle section. We could actually watch the beginning and end now, and quickly realised our initial plan of having similar emotional power continue through this middle section would be completely wrong. That was not who The Beatles were. At their core, they were irreverent and funny, and the middle section should capture that spirit. 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. 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 humor into some footage shot in 2023. The result is pretty nutty and provides the video with much-needed balance between the sad and the funny. It was finally finished after WētāFX completed a few simple, but tricky VFX shots. To be honest, while we hope we’ve given The Beatles a suitable final farewell, that’s something you’ll need to decide for yourselves when it’s finally released - only a few days from now. Having got to the end, I’m very happy I’m not waiting for the release of somebody else’s Now And Then music video. I have genuine pride in what we made, and I’ll cherish that for years to come. A huge thanks to Apple Corps and the Fabs for giving me all the support I needed - and not allowing me to wriggle away.” 7 am."
The global debut of the music video will coincide with the worldwide release of The Beatles' "Now And Then"/"Love Me Do" double A-side single on Thursday, November 2 at 2 pm GMT / 10 am EDT / 7am PDT. "Now And Then" was written and sung by John Lennon, developed and worked on by Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, and is now finally finished by Paul and Ringo after more than four decades. The last Beatles song is paired with the first: the band's 1962 debut UK single, "Love Me Do," a truly suitable full-circle companion to "Now And Then." Both songs are mixed in stereo and Dolby Atmos®, and the album's cover art is by renowned artist Ed Ruscha.
On November 10, The Beatles’ 1962-1966 (‘The Red Album’) and 1967-1970 (‘The Blue Album’) collections will be released in 2023 Edition packages by Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe. Since their first incarnations appeared 50 years ago, these albums have introduced successive generations to The Beatles’ music. Both collections’ track lists have been expanded for the new editions, with all the songs mixed in stereo and Dolby Atmos by Giles Martin and Sam Okell at Abbey Road Studios, aided by WingNut Films’ audio de-mixing technology. The UK single version of “Love Me Do” now kicks off 1962-1966 (2023 Edition) and “Now And Then” is featured in 1967-1970 (2023 Edition) to complete the career-spanning collections, which also include new essays written by journalist and author John Harris.
