The End of an Era of Love: Love is Still All We Need.

The End of an Era of Love: Love is Still All We Need

Yesterday, I listened to the Beatle’s “Last Single” called “Now and Then” and it moved me to tears. It’s not that the song is so sad, or even that it marks the end of the Beatles, but my tears were for the possible loss of of our democracy. I found in this song a conduit for my mourning. Released roughly a year ago, “Now and Then” was one of a number of demos John Lennon recorded that Yoko Ono gave to Beatles’ bandmate Paul McCartney in 1994. The surviving bandmates, George, Ringo, & Paul, recorded the song “Free as a Bird” with that tape. They also spent part of an afternoon on “Now and Then,” but the quality of John’s recording was poor and the bandmates gave it only passing attention and set it aside. Machine learning has now enabled computers to focus on specific elements of a track to make John’s voice sound like it is alive and present. This allowed Paul and Ringo to collaborate with John (and George) again to make the last Beatles song ever.

Today I watched the video for the single and again found myself moved, steeped in a feeling of loss. Digital magic shows the Beatles playing in the recording studio at all phases of their time together in a seamless, brilliant, humorous, and touching way. It is thrilling as it presents a promise that art can allow us to live forever. My sadness arises less from the wistfulness of the song and more from the realization the Beatles Era is over. I was born in August, 1969, while the Beatles were preparing Abbey Road (the last album they recorded together) released in September of that year. I grew up loving and listening to the Beatles even as I knew that they were never going to get back together.

The Now and Then album is clearly the bookend to the Beatles oeuvre. The other “A Side” of the album is the Beatles’ first release “Love Me Do.” The two songs also bookend the breadth of our experience of love. The former last message from the Beatles is contained in the final song of Abbey Road “The End.” In that final song in which every Beatle takes a solo, the final “golden rule” message is: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” On their final album release, “Love Me Do” is a simple, joyful introduction to the band where the message is one intreating the listener to love them; “Love, love me do, you know I love you.” “Now and Then” is a more mature song about a love that has possibly ended, but returns; is wistfully missed but one the band assures us will always endure.

Paul starts the song with a “One, two.” He omits the “Three, Four,” as there are only two Beatles remaining to perform the song. Plaintive guitar strumming and dirgelike chords on the piano lead to John’s simple lyrics: “I know it’s true, its’ all because of you. And if I make it through, it’s all because of you.”

Who is the “you” John is singing about? The songs of John’s solo career were mostly written to Yoko, and the next lines of the song fit neatly into their love story. “And now and then/ If we must start again/ Well, we will know for sure/ That I will love you.” This is reminiscent of the Double Fantasy song “(Just like) Starting Over.” But, upon hearing the song for the first time I found it ironic that “It’s all because of you,” though sung by John, was now also about John.

When John sings “Now and then, I miss you” the listening fan cannot escape thinking of how we still miss John Lennon. The twelve minute documentary of the making of the song makes it clear that it was Paul McCartney’s love for John and a wish to find closure that helped this song come to be. As the phrase “Now and then I miss you” so captures the way sadness of friends or family long dead will come in waves that hit us from time to time. Itis not a stretch that this is Lennon admitting that he sometimes misses his old bandmates, too. The video certainly pushes that narrative visually to restore a sense of love between the bandmates. The phrase “It’s all because of you,” is then, in many ways a final “With a Little Help from my Friends.” But if one looks at the song as “The Final Beatles’ Song.” “Now and Then” makes the most sense if it is seen as a song about the music itself. What is it that sustains a musician, that they devote their life to? It is their art, their muse. “I want you to be there for me/ Always to return to me/ I know it’s true/ It’s all because of you.”

Something lovely about the creation of the song is that George Martin’s son helped to arrange the strings and Jeff Lynn whom George Harrison insisted should help with the “Free as a Bird” recording was also a producer and his distinctive sound is represented. This short, simple song embodies so many different facets of the Beatle’s experience. Paul added no lyrics, but tightened up the song by removing some in a way that he felt was as it would have been if the two were together, and his slide guitar emulates George’s sound so well.

My streaming service offered John Lennon’s song “God” as a song to play after “Now and Then.” “God” was one of John’s angry songs that touches on the end of the Beatles. In “God,” John lists all of what he no longer believes in, with the most devastating and disillusioned assertion that “I don’t believe in Beatles.” He ends the song telling the listener: “The Dream is over, what can I say? The dream is over, yesterday…now I’m just John. And so my dear friends, you’ll just have to carry on. The dream is over.” While “Now and repeats that same feeling of loss it also promises we can start again, but also gives the sense that the separation can be repaired: “And if you go away/ I know you’ll never stay.”

But the Beatles’ era is really over, and with it, the idealism of the 60’s is also dead. In “Revolution” they sang, “You say you want to change the constitution, well we all want to change your head.” Sadly, we have elected someone who will change the Constitution and more. The Donald Trump election hit me like the assassination of John Lennon in 1980. In 1980 one person ended the life of someone who imagined a world where all you needed was love and one that could live in peace. Now we elected a president who looks to end the peaceful and equitable society that was at the core of the best of the activism born in the 1960’s. That era of idealism that grew with the Beatles is dying with the Beatles.

Even as the Beatles are no longer, and there will be no more of their music; their influence is everywhere, and the simple truth of love and music is always there. We just need to turn our minds to this place of imagination and art and reject the bleak “truth” that mankind is hatred. Those who have understood the magic of “Strawberry Fields” know that Love is still “all you need,” and this is the way forward. The tool to fight Facism is Love. Love and music will never leave us and it will always return back again. I look forward to all the great art that will be made in the coming dark time ahead.

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