Paul McCartney reveals joy behind Now And Then and says it felt like John Lennon was in the studio with them

IT’S a song that has been 45 years in the making, but yesterday The Beatles returned for a glorious last hurrah with new single Now And Then.

Tens of thousands of fans across the globe set alarms for 2pm UK time to hear John Lennon come back to life on the track, which will undoubtedly shoot straight to the No1 spot next Friday.

As Liam Gallagher put it: “Absolutely incredible, biblical, celestial, heartbreaking and heart-warming all at the same time.

"Long live The Beatles.”

Rather less poetically, he later added: “The Beatles could s**t in my handbag, I’d still hide my polo mints in there.”

It’s crass, but I admit I understand the sentiment.

Paul McCartney, alongside Ringo Starr, used artificial intelligence to rework the track, which John first started working on in the late Seventies.

Bringing the tune to life was an emotional process for the pair, with Paul admitting that hearing John’s voice again took him back in time.

He said yesterday: “When we were in the studio we had John’s voice in our ears so you could imagine he was just in the next room in a vocal booth or something, and we were just working with him again, so it was joyful.

“It was really lovely, you know, because we hadn’t experienced that for a long time obviously and then suddenly here we were working with old Johnny.”

It was John’s wife, Yoko Ono, who found the original recording of the song after John was murdered in December 1980 by crazed fantasist Mark Chapman.

Recalling the moment Yoko handed over some of John’s unfinished work, Paul explained: “Before John died he was working on some songs and Yoko spoke to George Harrison and said, ‘I’ve got a cassette with some John songs on that he never got to finish.

"Would you be interested in finishing them off?’.

“So we thought about it and we thought, ‘Yeah, it would be great’, because in a way we would be working with John again, which we thought we would never be able to do.

“We worked and finished two of the songs but we didn’t get round to finishing the third one.

“And the third one is called Now And Then.

“So it was knocking around for a long time and I kept thinking, ‘There’s something here, you know, we should finish this’.”

Paul added: “I ended up talking to Ringo and we asked him if he fancied putting the drums on again and then I thought, ‘Well, I could up the bass a bit’, so I put the bass on again.

“We already had George playing guitar and we had John on vocal, it was kind of magical doing it.

“So we ended up making it into a real record and that’s what’s being released.”

After finally hearing Now And Then, fans admitted they were overwhelmed by John’s voice again.

One fan, Harry, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Now And Then by The Beatles is absolutely beautiful.

"What an unexpected but wonderful end to The Beatles’ incredible discography.

“What a treat to experience a new release by The Beatles.

"Some- thing that I never thought I would have in my lifetime.”

Louise McPherson added: “Getting strangely emotional as I listen to Now And Then . . . the last Beatles song . . .  hauntingly beautiful.”

Long-time fan Michael Warburton told his followers: “The most poignant, beautiful full-stop to the greatest band in the history of music.”

While Beatlemania began in the Sixties, the influence of the group’s music on modern-day stars is impossible to deny.

Now And Then will undoubtedly continue to inspire the next generation, and Paul admitted that he was still flattered to hear singers, including Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, talk about their music.

Appearing on Radio 1, Paul said: “It’s a great thing, because in speaking to people like Dave and other people like that, they say we didn’t know what was coming.

“It’s like us, we were listening to early rock’n’roll records and they had so much influence on us, it just inspired us.

“So it’s lovely to think millions of people like Billie Eilish and the Arctic Monkeys . . .  it’s so great that the next generation got inspired by The Beatles.”

“I can’t blame them, mind you.”