Image: YouTube
Following months of intrigue, Now And Then – dubbed the last single by The Beatles to feature all four members – finally dropped yesterday, thanks to the reconstruction efforts of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, with some help from artificial intelligence. One day before that, Peter Jackson’s short documentary about the making of the new track appeared. And today, we have the music video for it – also from Jackson.
This is the first music video the filmmaker has ever worked on, and follows his collaboration with the band on his 2021 documentary series The Beatles: Get Back. In a media release, Jackson noted that he was initially reluctant to accept the gargantuan task of creating the visuals for the “final” song, saying that he found the “collection of anxieties almost too overwhelming to deal with.” He also attempted to use the paucity of useful footage of the band as ammo to avoid the task – but then he was handed fourteen hours of rediscovered video of all of The Beatles together in the mid 90s.
Along with Paul and Ringo, Jackson was assisted on the project by Sean Lennon and Olivia Harrison, both of whom gave him home movie footage. Pete Best also provided some of the earliest known film of the band, showing them at gigs in their leather suits.
Now And Then will be included on the expanded versions of the Red and Blue albums, which will drop a week from today.
Love, Dr. Scott James
