By Steve Newton
I just watched the Peter Jackson-directed music video for the “new” Beatles song, “Now and Then”, and it nearly chocked me up.
The 4 1/2-minute clip is a beautiful, heart-wrenching glimpse into what made the Fab Four so freakin’ fabulous, and it makes you miss the murdered John Lennon and cancer-killed George Harrison so damn much.
As I mentioned in a blog posted yesterday, the song itself is not a masterpiece–it had its origin in a previously unwanted John Lennon demo tape from the ’70s–but Jackson, the Oscar-winning horror director-turned-“Lord of the Rings”-mastermind, really knows how to turn the emotional screws for hardcore Beatles fans whose lives were forever brightened by the four lads from Liverpool.
“A Beatles music video must have great Beatles footage at its core,” wrote Jackson in a press release issued by Universal Music today. So using the state-of-the-art techniques he’s known for, and collecting archival material never seen before, he put together a tribute that features recent video of surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr–as well as shots of the two in the studio with Harrison in the ’90s–seamlessly interspersed with remastered footage of the band in its heyday.
“Now and then I miss you,” croon today’s Paul and Ringo to a shot of George and John smiling their asses off at the Beatles’ iconic 1965 Shea Stadium concert. Then, through the magic of technology, sixties George and John are brought back to life and shown playing guitars with Paul and Ringo in 2023. At that point, and throughout the clip, Lennon’s famed habit of goofing around for the camera is on full display. His silly dancing brings a nice, lighthearted touch to the melancholic vibe of the song.
But the most poignant bits of the video occur in the last 30 seconds, when one at a time the Beatles are shown, against a backdrop of Beatlemania, getting younger and younger, until they’re just the four little kids who would one day band together to change the world with music and love and try to make it a better place than it is right now.
That’s when you might get a little choked up.