Years after the band disbanded, John Lennon’s voice was extracted from an old demo to create “the last Beatles record,” according to Paul McCartney on Tuesday.
The technology was employed, according to McCartney, 80, to isolate the voices of the Beatles from other sounds when creating director Peter Jackson’s documentary series “The Beatles: Get Back” in 2021. He stated that the “new” song would be released later this year.
Jackson was “able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette and a piano,” McCartney spoke to BBC radio. “He could separate them with AI, he’d tell the machine ‘That’s a voice, this is a guitar, lose the guitar’.”
“So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles record, it was a demo that John had that we worked on,” he further added.
“We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI so then we could mix the record as you would do. It gives you some sort of leeway.”
The demo’s identity was not disclosed by McCartney, but the BBC and others speculated that it was most likely Lennon’s unfinished 1978 love song “Now and Then.”
According to the BBC, McCartney received the sample on a tape marked “For Paul” from John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono. “Kind of scary but exciting,” said McCartney of AI technology. “We will just have to see where that leads.”
The same technology allowed McCartney and Lennon, who was assassinated in 1980, to “duet” virtually on “I’ve Got a Feeling” at Glastonbury Festival the previous year.
The singer will open a show later this month at the National Portrait Gallery in London featuring never-before-seen photographs he took of the Beatles during their formative years, at the start of “Beatlemania,” when the group first attained international popularity.
