The day has finally arrived! The final Beatles song dropped today, November 2nd 2023. I listened to BBC Radio live this morning to hear this song for the first time, then immediately started to do this guitar cover
You all know the story- Yoko Ono gave George a cassette of four John Lennon piano demos in the early 1990’s. Free As A Bird, Real Love, Grow Old With Me and Now And Then. The remaining three Beatles tackled Free as a Bird and Real Love with the help of Jeff Lynne and released them as singles. They started to work on Now And Then, but because of bad audio quality (or possibly because George didn’t like the song) they scrapped it. Grow Old With Me was never worked on, until Ringo released his own version in 2019
Paul and Ringo completed Now And Then last year, using John’s voice (extracted with AI) and Harrison’s 1995 guitar parts. The music video drops tomorrow, and we may see some clips of what gear they used in it. But for now, I can say this is the FIRST YOUTUBE VIDEO covering this full beatles version of Now and Then
I made my best guess as to what guitars were played on it. We know that Paul and George recorded acoustic guitars together in 1995. In the short documentary about this song, you see Paul with a Martin D28 lefty, and George playing a Gibson J-185. I decided to use my 1969 Martin 00-18 and J-200 copy for these two guitars
George played a funky electric guitar rhythm part, as heard after the first chorus. It’s unclear at the moment what guitar he used, but probably a variant of a stratocaster or telecaster. I’m using my Fender Custom Shop Sonic Blue Strat into my Vox AC30C2x. We see George plugged into an AC30 in the ’95 sessions
Paul overdubbed a slide guitar solo last year, in honor of George. We may find out in the music video tomorrow which guitar he used. For now I’m playing my 2021 Epiphone Casino USA into the AC-30. I’m using an Analogman King of Tone and Comprossor pedal for extra sustain. The reverb is coming from my Altiverb plug-in
My Gear:
2021 Epiphone Casino USA Royal Tan
2022 Fender Custom Shop Journeyman ’63 Stratocaster
1969 Martin 00-18
1970’s Ibanez J-200 copy
Vox AC-30C2x
Analogman King of Tone
Analogman Small Comprossor
Neumann TLM-103
#thebeatles #nowandthen #guitarcover
Thanks for watching! Be sure to subscribe and check out my other Beatles covers