Sir Paul McCartney says artificial intelligence made ‘the last’ Beatles song possible

Sir Paul McCartney said he introduced artificial intelligence into the creation of what he called “The Beatles’ last record”.

“It has just been completed and will be released this year,” he explained.

Sir Paul wouldn’t name the song, but it’s probably a 1978 Lennon-composed song called “Now And Then.”

The song was already considered a possible “reunion song” for The Beatles in 1995, when they were compiling a career-spanning anthology series.

Sir Paul had received a demo from Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, a year earlier. The song was one of several on a cassette labeled “Four Pole” that John Lennon made shortly before his death in 1980.

The lo-fi and early tracks were mostly recorded on a boombox while the musicians sat at the piano in their New York apartment.

After being cleaned up by producer Jeff Lynne, two of the songs, Free As A Bird and Real Love, were released in 1995 and 1996, becoming the Beatles’ first “new songs” in 25 years.

The band also attempted to record “Now And Then”, an apologetic love song typical of Lennon’s later career, but the sessions were quickly abandoned.

“It was one afternoon, really messed up,” Lynn recalled.

“The song had a chorus but very few verses. We did a backing track, but we never really finished it.”

Sir Paul later claimed that George Harrison declared the song “crap” and refused to produce it.

“It wasn’t a very good title and it needed a bit of work, but it had a beautiful verse and John sang it,” he told Q magazine.

“[But] George didn’t like it. The Beatles are a democracy, so we didn’t do that. “

It was also said that the original recording had technical problems, and featured a persistent “booming” sound from the electrical circuitry in John Lennon’s apartment.

In 2009, a new version of the demo without background noise was released on bootleg CD. Fans speculate that the recording was not available in 1995 and was stolen from his apartment along with other personal belongings after his death.

In the previous years, Sir Paul had repeatedly expressed his desire to complete the song.

In a 2012 BBC Four documentary on Jeff Lynne, he said, “It still haunts me.” “So I’m thinking of working with Jeff. I’ll finish it soon.”

Technology seems to have given musicians a chance to achieve that goal.

The turning point came in Peter Jackson’s documentary Get Back. There, dialogue editor Emile de la Rey trained a computer to recognize the Beatles’ voices and create “clean” audio separated from background noise and even his own instruments. bottom.

The same process allowed Sir Paul to ‘duet’ with Lennon on his recent tour and led to the creation of a new surround sound mix of The Beatles’ album ‘Revolver’ last year.

“he [Jackson] I was able to pull John’s voice out of a little ropey cassette,” Sir Paul told Radio 4’s Martha Carney.

“We had John’s voice and piano, and he was able to separate them with AI. They told the machine, ‘This is the voice. This is the guitar. Lose the guitar.’ I will instruct you.”

“So when we tried to make what would be the Beatles’ last record, it was a demo that John had.” [and] Through this AI, we were able to extract John’s voice purely.

“Then you can mix the record like you normally would, which gives you some leeway.”

However, the musician acknowledged that other applications of AI have caused concern.

“I don’t go to the internet much [but] People would say to me, ‘Oh yeah, there’s a track with John singing my song’ and it’s just AI, you know?

“It’s kind of scary, but exciting, because this is the future. We’ll just have to see where it leads.”

Starr told Radio 4 ahead of the new book launch and accompanying photo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Entitled ‘Eyes Of The Storm’, the project includes portraits taken by Sir Paul with his own camera between December 1963 and February 1964, when the Beatles rose to worldwide prominence. It is recorded.