The new Beatles single is out. Its called ‘Now and then’ and its a fab… song, featuring all the usual suspects, but not necessarily in the correct order. Because this song, although an ‘original’ John Lennon track, was deemed, in 1977, when he writ it, too shit for the Beatles. But then he died, just a few years later. I would say ‘murdered’ but that sounds so mundane for such an incredible, world-changing person, so I’ll say ‘assassinated’ instead. Only really important people are lucky enough to get that. Its an honour.

And when someone that famous dies, the value of everything gets hiked exponentially. So when they found the demo John had made of Now & Then on his home studio, they decided to complete it. Why not? The McCartney half of the partnership is still live and well and as long as he can still hold a pen he can finish a few verses. Then comes the clever bit. They wanted to John to sing it. And after 30-odd years in the ground, let’s just say ‘his voice ain’t wot it used to be’.

But this is now 2023. And mere death is no obstruction to producing a sure-fire number 1 hit. So they called in Peter Jackson. He’s the geezer that turned New Zealand into the Hobbit. He made normal people into dwarves, abnormal people into Gollums and other weird things and most importantly, he is a master at AI. Which is so clever that if you play your nearest Robot a few old Beatles songs, he/she/it will ‘BE’ the voice of Lennon in all its idiosyncrasies, Scouse twangs and actually sound more like John Lennon than he ever sounded. Just like Terminator could do. Play a few George Harrison riffs and solos and your own R2D2 will play While My Guitar Gently Weeps like the man himself. Ok, like the corpse himself. Paul and Ringo are good to go. If a bit old, so Mr Jackson might need to enhance slightly.

And thus, the ‘Fab 2’ are once again the ‘Fab 4’, for the purposes of the new song. And that’s brilliant. So coming soon, there’s the new album by Jimi Hendrix, ‘Purple Grave’; Sinatra’s revamp hit; ‘Come Die with me’ and Bowie’s re-release of ‘Under Pressure’.

We no longer need musicians. We have computers. We have Peter Jackson.

Fab Wednesay

A xxxx