A Beautiful Ending

I saw the video for the new Beatles song “Now and Then” and I thought it was a beautiful ending to the career of the band. I’m fascinated by the technology used to create the song from an old cassette tape recorder. I watched the story of the song and how it lay unusable for almost 30 years after it was received from Yoko Ono. The original sound was very poor, the piano and vocals seemed to alternate being the dominant sound, as if John Lennon were rocking back and forth at the piano as he sang and played, moving closer and farther from the microphone. Hearing the muffled voice was an eerie experience.

I’ve always been a huge John Lennon fan. He was a keen observer of humanity as he matured. He made mistakes just like everyone else, although his were public fodder because he was a Beatle. “Only an imperfect person can honestly describe the world”, that seems like a Lennon quote to me.

Again, I don’t believe that John Lennon, or anyone else for that matter, is perfect, we must learn to recognize our faults, try to correct them, and keep on living.

The new song is rather genteel as far as classic rock goes, but it reflects everyone growing older and observing life in a different way. I was emotional watching the magic of technology bringing images of John and George almost back to life. The images of each Beatles as they grew younger was brilliantly done, and the final scene was, in effect, a final goodbye from the Fab Four.