[D66] Paul McCartney says artificial intelligence has enabled a 'final' Beatles song

[René Oudeweg]

bbc.com <https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-65881813>


  Sir Paul McCartney says artificial intelligence has enabled a 'final'
  Beatles song

By Mark Savage
5–6 minutes
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The BeatlesImage source, Getty Images

Image caption,

The Beatles previously cleaned up John Lennon demos to create the "new" 
songs *Free As A Bird and Real Love*

*Sir Paul McCartney says he has employed artificial intelligence to help 
create what he calls "the final Beatles record".*

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme 
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0ftvczc> the technology had been 
used to "extricate" John Lennon's voice from an old demo so he could 
complete the song.

"We just finished it up and it'll be released this year," he explained.

Sir Paul did not name the song, but it is likely to be a 1978 Lennon 
composition called Now And Then.

It had already been considered as a possible "reunion song" for the 
Beatles in 1995, as they were compiling their career-spanning Anthology 
series.

Sir Paul had received the demo a year earlier from Lennon's widow, Yoko 
Ono. It was one of several songs on a cassette labelled "For Paul" that 
Lennon had made shortly before his death in 1980.

Lo-fi and embryonic, the tracks were largely recorded onto a boombox as 
the musician sat at a piano in his New York apartment.

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption,

Lennon wrote Now And Then during his "retirement" era, when he had no 
record contract and was busy raising his son, Sean

Cleaned up by producer Jeff Lynne, two of those songs - Free As A Bird 
and Real Love - were completed and released in 1995 and 96, marking the 
Beatles' first "new" material in 25 years.

The band also attempted to record Now And Then, an apologetic love song 
that was fairly typical of Lennon's later career, but the session was 
quickly abandoned.

"It was one day - one afternoon, really - messing with it," Lynne recalled.

"The song had a chorus but is almost totally lacking in verses. We did 
the backing track, a rough go that we really didn't finish."

Sir Paul later claimed George Harrison refused to work on the song, 
saying the sound quality of Lennon's vocal was "rubbish".

"It didn't have a very good title, it needed a bit of reworking, but it 
had a beautiful verse and it had John singing it," he told Q Magazine.

"[But] George didn't like it. The Beatles being a democracy, we didn't 
do it."

Image source, PA Media

Image caption,

The three remaining Beatles (L-R Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George 
Harrison, pictured with producer George Martin) re-entered the recording 
studio in 1995

There were also said to have been technical issues with the original 
recording, which featured a persistent "buzz" from the electricity 
circuits in Lennon's apartment.

In 2009, a new version of the demo, without the background noise, was 
released on a bootleg CD. Fans have speculated that this recording may 
not have been available in 1995, suggesting it was stolen from his 
apartment, along with other personal effects, after his death.

In the intervening years, Sir Paul has repeatedly talked about his 
desire to finish the song.

"That one's still lingering around," he told a BBC Four documentary on 
Jeff Lynne in 2012. "So I'm going to nick in with Jeff and do it. Finish 
it, one of these days."


    'Ropey cassette'

It would seem that technology has now afforded the musician a chance to 
achieve that goal.

The turning point came with Peter Jackson's Get Back documentary, where 
dialogue editor Emile de la Rey trained computers to recognise the 
Beatles' voices and separate them from background noises, and even their 
own instruments, to create "clean" audio.

The same process allowed Sir Paul to "duet" with Lennon on his recent 
tour, and for new surround sound mixes of the Beatles' Revolver album to 
be created last year.

"He [Jackson] was able to extricate John's voice from a ropey little bit 
of cassette," Sir Paul told Radio 4's Martha Kearney.

"We had John's voice and a piano and he could separate them with AI. 
They tell the machine, 'That's the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the 
guitar'.

"So when we came to to make what will be the last Beatles' record, it 
was a demo that John had [and] we were able to take John's voice and get 
it pure through this AI.

"Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you 
some sort of leeway."

However, the musician admitted that other applications of AI gave him 
cause for concern.

"I'm not on the internet that much [but] people will say to me, 'Oh, 
yeah, there's a track where John's singing one of my songs', and it's 
just AI, you know?

"It's kind of scary but exciting, because it's the future. We'll just 
have to see where that leads."

The star was talking to Radio 4 ahead of the launch of a new book and 
accompanying photography exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Titled Eyes Of The Storm, the project features portraits taken by Sir 
Paul on his own camera, between December 1963 and February 1964, as the 
Beatles were catapulted to global fame.


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