First of all, you bill anything in rock and roll as ‘the last’ and you’re setting yourself up for jokes later. “Now and Then,” the new four-minute single by The Beatles, was announced a while ago and much-ballyhooed with stories about how it used artificial intelligence, which quickly became the narrative of a digital John Lennon harmonizing with Paul McCartney and a robot writing the next version of “Love Me Do” or whatnot. What the AI did was pull Lennon‘s vocals off the original piano line from the demo of the song he recorded in 1979/1980 — the famous “For Paul” tape that Yoko Ono gave McCartney when they were doing The Beatles Anthology in the ’90s; what a time to be alive that was — but you can hear parts where gaps have been filled in in the early verse line “…And if I make it through, it’s all because of you,” in that quiet beginning of piano, acoustic guitar, drums that recall the gentler love songs on A Hard Day’s Night — thinking “If I Fell” — but that suits the melancholy, contemplative, very modern-pop ‘moment’ happening in that verse.

Is it The Beatles — John Lennon (R.I.P. 1980), Paul McCartney, George Harrison (R.I.P. 2001) and Ringo Starr — getting a gritty reboot from producer Giles Martin, who is of course the son of George Martin, who helmed so much of the band’s studio work during their unparalleled legendary run from 1962-1970? If so, it wouldn’t be the first one. In addition to the oft-memed volume raising on sundry new remasters of their work, and the aforementioned The Beatles Anthology digging out alternate studio versions of their material and presenting the first new Beatles songs since Let it Be in “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” the removal of static alone from the Live at the BBC releases, then you get to the surround sound, the new mixes, the alternate mixes, the instrumental versions, the isolated bass tracks, on and on and on. The Beatles‘ music has been pulled, pushed, screwed and unscrewed and manipulated every which way for at least the last 40 years. They don’t seem to mind.

The Lennon-on-piano-in-his-living-room demos on which “Now and Then,” as well as “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” were based have been officially released, but they too, as well as the session material that produced what was then also called “the last Beatles songs” has been bootlegged. Lennon takes the lead vocal in the verse, but that’s grace on the part of McCartney. If you ever compared the Anthology versions of those songs with the original bootlegs, there’s an awful lot of the Beatles story that became the Paul story in the 1990s and that narrative has persisted as decades have passed since Lennon‘s murder and Harrison‘s passing from cancer in 2001. I cried when he died. I cried the first time I listened to “Now and Then” last night. I cry at the drop of a hat these days. But the point is McCartney is the CEO of The Beatles, and whatever’s happening under their banner is happening under his watch. It’s pretty clear at least he’s thinking of this as his last go.

You can hear it in how crammed the arrangement of “Now and Then” becomes. Everybody sings. Never mind how on earth it’s remotely possible, it’s happened and it exists. Four-plus decades of recording processes and likely millions of actual dollars went into making it happen. It was done with cutting edge science. It is very likely the final time new Beatles music will be issued to the public during Paul McCartney‘s lifetime, and he knows it. Death as the fifth Beatle. So it’s all-out. Big chorus, layers of voices (some watery effect there) and strings coming in to tick the “Eleanor Rigby” box — they’ll be back — and an unmistakable Beatlesness to its underlying bounce that’s been audible in the work of others for the last 60 years. A flash of sitar in the next verse — subtle, because they’ve gone to that well a lot and it feels a bit obligatory at this point — and some tambourine as they move to the next hook, classy with Ringo on the ride and the rising background vocals giving over to the solo, very George Harrison.

And right about at 2:48 is where it feels like it should start to wind down, but it doesn’t because this is “Now and Then” and they’re gonna cover all eras. They had the early days in the song’s start, moving through Revolver and the mid-’60s in the chorus, and so the big ending is, of course, constructed in the spirit of The Beatles‘ later work. Another solo starts at 2:49, plotted, melodic, classy, soon joined by the background vocals and a shift back to the verse; little flourishes of strings feel current but fit just fine — one has to acknowledge the now, I get it — and then an instrumental comedown finish of the sort that might’ve wrapped a tune on Help! in 1964, which is cute and feels kind of like a Beatles reference.

There are a lot of Beatles references being made here — the song also feels like it’s The Beatles talking about The Beatles, which is maybe inevitable — and that’s fine if you’re one of those people who think the band wrote their songs specifically so that you could apply them to your own life (in other words, even the most casual of Beatles fans), and thinking of the generation who was there when the band first happened, I’d imagine it’s pretty special for someone who remembers watching Ed Sullivan. It’s pretty special for me, who chased down silver-back-disc CD bootlegs in the early 1990s as a pubescent goober and remembers watching the “Free as a Bird” video like 700 times on MTV — you know what? I’m gonna go watch it now; I’ll be right back — but the song feels inflated going back to the verse and with that extra four measures of soloing in a way that, if it was then and not now, it probably wouldn’t be by the time it came out.

Oh no there’s new Beatles and it’s too long for the guy into doom metal? Do you think the band will be able to survive the hit? Yes, but I’ll be curious to see if they’ll knock Taylor Swift off the charts. I do like the song, for whatever that’s worth. And in time I’ll love it. It’s sweet in a way not much dares to be in broader popular culture, and while I think the cover art could possibly be more elaborate, at least it’s not cartoon boobs. This band’s music changed my life, and last night I got to sit with my daughter on my lap and listen to it with her for the first time and if I’d had an aneurism and keeled over five minutes later I’d have died a satisfied human being for that.

Do I really think it’s the last? Never say never. Some lost tape, some creative great-grandchildren 70 years from now. Holograms and better programming. Maybe cynical, but it doesn’t seem impossible or even entirely unlikely to me that new Beatles music would be made or released after all the members of the band have died. AI can already write you Beatles songs. And even if it wasn’t arranged by robots, “Now and Then”‘s self-referential penchant recalls other new-generation relaunches from various media properties with similarly-positioned standout recognizable elements. “It’s not just a tambourine, it’s a Beatles tambourine,” and so on. But no question “Now and Then” is a landmark by the simple fact of its existence, and I’m glad to have been on the planet when it happened along.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

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Much of this week would turn out to be defined by the moment on Tuesday when, coming back from the Littleton School Halloween parade — The Pecan was a purple octopus; I had nothing to do with it, but her grandmother made her costume and it was spectacular — the dog got out. I was carrying two armloads of crap in from the car, as ever, and wife and child were already in the house. I called to The Patient Mrs. to call Tilly to get her in as she stood on the porch, looking at me and realizing the freedom she now had because I was stuck standing there with two armloads of crap and no leash, but the bathroom door closed and that was my answer. She didn’t hear. The Pecan, off somewhere else doing her thing.

What a mess. The dog, of course, sprints off the porch and onto the lawn. We live one house away from a four-lane road; this is not a place you want a young dog to be off-leash. I give chase and she darts for the street. I look, a silver SUV coming around the corner, timing just right. I damn near had a heart attack thinking about having to go inside and tell my daughter her dog just got run over. Yelling with my arms up I stop the car as Tilly jukes to the right, cuts the corner on the neighbor’s driveway and goes diagonal across their yard. For a quick second she’s actually heading toward our house but from behind her running I have no way to direct her there. And she won’t stop. Tilly come. Tilly stop. Tilly wait. All of these things we need to work on, apparently. Lesson learned.

She straightened out her path, then looped around to the neighbor’s back yard. They have two young kids and two dachshunds, so I expect they’re probably used to weird shit at least on some level, but I do hope someone happened to be looking out a window at just the right time to see me sprint onto their property and tackle my now-seven-pound shih-tzu/bichon frisee mix, because I can only think it would’ve bean a wonder to behold. In a humbling reminder that I’m in my 40s, I was out of breath for like an hour afterward, and I’d say it was the better part of three before my nerves had really settled. I didn’t hit the dog. She definitely got a stern-ass talking to, though. And I grabbed her muzzle, which is kind of our go-to correction, to let her know she messed up. We’re also working on “stay back” when the door is open. She’s amenable to these things, which helps.

And she sits with me on the couch in the mornings when I’m up, like today, now. She’s a good little dog, she’s just still very much a puppy. So I got her, but that’s not the end of the story, because the next morning I realized my car key was missing. And I didn’t find it all day in the house, and with the pants I was wearing when I chased the dog, I knew, just knew, that my key had fallen out of my pocket in the yard somewhere and that it was gone, gone, gone. We looked the entire day, just about everywhere I’ve ever put a key and in places like the bathroom where I very much do not put my key, which is just the clicker on a keychain and a key to the storage unit where my CD collection mostly lives. No car was going to make yesterday difficult.

Wednesday night, The Patient Mrs. reserved a metal detector from our local library. I was like, “You gotta be fucking kidding me.” I didn’t know this, but apparently I carry a strong bias against metal detectors. I don’t know if I had some negative experience with one as a child but in my head they’re absolute bullshit universally. Nonetheless, I love and trust my wife and so I went to the library yesterday morning, got this metal detector and with The Pecan after a half-day of school yesterday searched the neighbor’s yard for my car key, beep, beep, beep, boop all the while. Nothing. I looked on the route I took and in back where I finally rolled her over on the ground, and no dice. We went back in the house.

The Patient Mrs. came home from work about 15 minutes later, put the thing back together, went outside, started a grid search pattern with the admirable confidence of an Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher, and found the key within 15 minutes of beginning. The moral of the story, obviously, is that I am married to a goddess, and if I spend the rest of however many days I’ll walk this wretched decaying earth worshiping at her altar I’ll be lucky to do it.

Pretty god damn astonishing, and it turned the entire week around after a current of stress had settled over about 40 hours of it or so. Today we’re taking The Pecan out of school to go see the Statue of Liberty, which she wanted to do for her birthday and we were like ‘uh okay sure.’ Tickets to go up and all that. So I look forward to I believe 167 stairs in my near future. Will be wearing light pants. Whatever you’re up to, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Next week is packed, so sit tight. Have fun, hydrate, watch your head. If you need me over the weekend, I’ll be writing at least for part of it.

FRM.

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