Long Lost Beatles Song Written By John Lennon May Be Released As Aspinall Tribute
April 2, 2008 by Dave Parrack
There are rumours that a long lost song written by John Lennon for The Beatles could now be completed and released as a tribute to Neil Aspinall.
Aspinall was band’s manager, and long-time friend who was regarded as “the fifth Beatle” until his death on March 24th.
The track, titled Now and Then, was discovered along with Free Bird and Real Love, both of which have since been remastered and released. Both became top ten hits proving that there is a still a demand for anything written by Lennon, or associated with The Beatles.
According to the NME, an insider told The Sun newspaper:
“There have been discussions about finishing ‘Now And Then’. It would be quite a task. The process of re-recording the two tracks that charted was fairly painless because the songs were almost complete.”
“‘Now And Then’ will need a significant amount more work to get it into a condition where it could be released.”
It’s not clear as to whether Lennon’s surviving band mates Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney would be interested in adding elements to the song to make it fit for release. Both of them seem to be distancing themselves from their former group these days.
I’d like to see this happen, and I’d certainly buy it. Free Bird is one of my favourite Beatles tracks, and hopefully this could be just as good.
It would also be a very fitting tribute to Aspinall, who was involved with the band right from 1961 to the day he died.
[Photo Source: François DELBAR at Flickr]
No way it will happen without George Martin who retired after “Love”. And regardless, I just don’t think that they have enough to work with judging from the demo, to make a Beatles-quality product. The two other Threetles songs sounded tinny enough but this one is bad.