The Beatles will release their “last song” next week, but what if it sucks?

collage by the newts

By Steve Newton

I’ve been a hardcore Beatles fan since the age of six.

That’s how old I was when they made their North American TV debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

And right around that time I purchased my very first record. I was visiting my grandparents at their home in Vancouver, and my mom took me on a walk to a music store on 10th Avenue. I came back with a Beatles 45 that had “Please Mr. Postman” on one side and a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” on the other.

I’m not sure which was the single and which was the B-side, but it didn’t matter; I played both sides of that sucker until I was kindly asked to give it a rest.

I was 10 years old when the Beatles’ masterful Sgt. Peppers was released in ’67, so when I wasn’t playing road hockey I would spend countless hours splayed out on the living room carpet listening to it on my parents console stereo and reading along to the lyrics printed on the back cover.

Over and over and over again.

Man did I love that album. The entire Newton clan did. I’d fight with my little sister to see who could hold the album and read along.

Two years later a tragic family death would shatter our happy lives, but we always had the Beatles to help ease the pain.

I remember getting totally spoilt the year after that, in 1970, when I was gifted with the limited-edition version of Let It Be, which came with a 160-page softcover book, featuring scads of colour photos printed on glossy paper.

Over time that beloved book fell apart–either from repeated viewings or bad glue or maybe both–but a few years ago I gathered my two kids together and we had some major family fun creating a collage poster with our fave photos from the book. That glued-together work of art now resides in my man cave, and just came in handy when I needed a feature image for this blog about the upcoming release of “the last Beatles song”.

Universal Music announced today that “Now And Then”–a song written and sung by John Lennon, developed and worked on by Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, and now finally finished by Paul and Ringo–will be released worldwide on November 2.

According to the promo material released by Universal today, the story of “Now And Then” begins in the late ’70s, when Lennon recorded a demo with vocals and piano at his apartment in Manhattan’s Dakota Building.

In 1994 his wife Yoko gave the recording to the three remaining Beatles–along with Lennon’s demos for “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love”–which were both completed as new Beatles tunes and respectively released as singles in 1995 and 1996 as part of The Beatles Anthology project.

Now I don’t know about you, but I didn’t think “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love” were particularly great songs. I mean, there’s a reason they were left as unused demos, right?

So I’m really hoping that “Now and Then” is going to be something special, and not simply an excuse to try and sell shiploads of Beatles product.

I guess we’ll find out on November 2.

Will “the last Beatles song” suck or rule? Get your bets in now.