The Story of the unreleased Now and Then by John Lennon and The Beatles

Now and Then” (sometimes referred to as “I Don’t Want to Lose You” or “Miss You”) is an unfinished song by John Lennon, recorded in 1978 as a solo piano/vocal demo. After his death, it was considered as a third possible reunion single by his former band, the Beatles, for their 1995 autobiographical project The Beatles Anthology, following “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”.

Lennon wrote “Now and Then” in the late 1970s. He recorded the unfinished piece of music in a demo form at his home at the Dakota Building, New York City, 1978. The lyrics are typical of the apologetic love songs that Lennon wrote in the latter half of his career. Despite reports, for the most part the verses are nearly complete, though there are still a few lines that Lennon did not flesh out on the demo tape performance


I think it’s already, in this form, a beautiful melancholic ballad. Full of sadness about estranged friends and lost possibilities, and hope.

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The Beatles playing Bob Dylan songs during the January 1969 Get Back/Let It Be sessions

George Harrison visited Bob Dylan in Woodstock late November 1968. They probably listened to and played a lot of songs together. He most certainly heard a new composition I Threw It All Away (Dylan recorded this one in February 1969 for “Nashville Skyline”).


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The Story of the unreleased Sour Milk Sea by The Beatles

Sour Milk Sea was written by George Harrison during the Beatles’ stay in Rishikesh, India, and given to Jackie Lomax to help launch Apple Records. The recording is a rarity among non-Beatles songs since it features three members of the band – Harrison, who also produced the track, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, the song also includes musical contributions from Eric Clapton and session pianist Nicky Hopkins, and was the first of many Harrison productions for artists signed to the Beatles’ record label.

“..it’s based on Vishvasara Tantra, from Tantric art. ‘What is here is elsewhere, what is not here is nowhere’. It’s a picture, and the picture is called ‘Sour Milk Sea’ – Kalladadi Samudra in Sanskrit. I used Sour Milk Sea as the idea of – if you’re in the shit, don’t go around moaning about it: do something about it”
– George Harrison (I, me, mine, august 1980)

George Harrison wrote “Sour Milk Sea” to promote Transcendental Meditation, which the Beatles had been studying in Rishikesh with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In the lyrics, Harrison espouses meditation as a remedy for worldly cares. The group recorded a demo of the song while considering material for their 1968 double album, The Beatles (also known as “the White Album”). The Demo is part of the so called Esher recordings (also called the Kinfauns tapes). This version has now been officially released on the 50th anniversary box-set of The White Album.

The Esher-version:


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August 23: The Beatles released “She Loves You” in 1963

Beatles_-_She_Loves_You

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

“John and I wrote She Loves You together. There was a Bobby Rydell song (Forget Him) out at the time and, as often happens, you think of one song when you write another.

We were in a van up in Newcastle. I’d planned an ‘answering song’ where a couple of us would sing ‘She loves you…’ and the other one answers, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ We decided that that was a crummy idea as it was, but at least we then had the idea for a song called She Loves You. So we sat in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it.”
– Paul McCartney (Anthology)

“She Loves You” is a song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and recorded by English rock group the Beatles for release as a single in 1963. The single set and surpassed several records in the United Kingdom charts, and set a record in the United States as one of the five Beatles songs that held the top five positions in the American charts simultaneously on 4 April 1964. It is their best-selling single in the United Kingdom, and was the best selling single there in 1963.In November 2004, Rolling Stone ranked “She Loves You” number 64 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In August 2009, at the end of its “Beatles Weekend”, BBC Radio 2 announced that “She Loves You” was the Beatles’ all-time best-selling single in the UK based on information compiled by The Official Charts Company.

The single was released on August 23, 1963.

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July 10: The Beatles released A Hard Day’s Night in 1964

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]We were different. We were older. We knew each other on all kinds of levels that we didn’t when we were teenagers. The early stuff – the Hard Day’s Night period, I call it – was the sexual equivalent of the beginning hysteria of a relationship. And the Sgt Pepper-Abbey Road period was the mature part of the relationship.”
– John Lennon (1980)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

A Hard Day’s Night is the third album by The Beatles; it was released on July 10, 1964. The album is a soundtrack to the A Hard Day’s Night film, starring the Beatles. The American version of the album was released two weeks earlier, on 26 June 1964 by United Artists Records, with a different track listing. This is the first Beatles album to be recorded entirely on four-track tape, allowing for good stereo mixes.

HDN

In 2000, Q placed A Hard Day’s Night at number 5 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. In 2003, the album was ranked number 388 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

The soundtrack songs were recorded in late February, and the non-soundtrack songs were recorded in June. The title song itself was recorded on April 16.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]…but A Hard Day’s Night is perhaps the band’s most straightforward album: You notice the catchiness first, and you can wonder how they got it later.

The best example of this is the title track– the clang of that opening chord to put everyone on notice, two burning minutes thick with percussion (including a hammering cowbell!) thanks to the new four-track machines George Martin was using, and then the song spiraling out with a guitar figure as abstractedly lovely as anything the group had recorded.”
– Tom Ewing, Pitchfork[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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July 7: Happy 79th Birthday Ringo Starr

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Ringo was a star in his own right in Liverpool before we even met. Ringo was a professional drummer who sang and performed and was in one of the top groups in Britain, but especially in Liverpool. So Ringo’s talent would have come out one way or the other … whatever that spark is in Ringo, we all know it but can’t put our finger on it. Whether it’s acting, drumming, or singing, I don’t know. There’s something in him that is projectable and he would have surfaced as an individual … Ringo is a damn good drummer.
~John Lennon (Sept 1980)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Beatles accept award Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions 1988:

Nice tribute video from youtube:

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