FEATURE:
Precious Stones and a Merseyside Final Chapter…
IN THIS PHOTO: Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones/Thea Traff for The New York Times
2023 and the ‘Return’ and New Success of Legends Like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones
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THIS article…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles/PHOTO CREDIT: © Apple Corps Ltd
I am about to source was published a little while ago, though I have been compelled to react to it. It makes an interesting point. In terms of this year, we have seen some exceptional new music from artists coming through. It is quite rare that two bands who entered the music scene over sixty years ago would make the news. The Beatles’ final single, Now and Then, hit number one on the charts. The Rolling Stones’ latest (and perhaps final) album, Hackney Diamonds, went to number one in the U.K. Who would have thought that two legends of the past are still making headlines?! Some have said it is almost like a return to 1967. That was a big moment for both bands. I am going to expand on that thought. I am sure there is this fortunate moment when two iconic British bands are releasing hugely impressive and important work at the same time. There is also a slightly yearning to the past. Also proof that music is not dominated by the young and contemporary. I wonder whether we will see more legacy artists reign and be back in the headlines. There is a possibility that contemporaries of both The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, The Kinks, will reform in some form. I know artists decades-running such as Kylie Minogue have released career-best work this year too (with Tension); Madonna is on a worldwide tour, though there is something even more unexpected and special about one-time ‘rivals’ The Beatles and The Rolling Stones putting out music. Rolling Stone reacted to the release and success of Now and Then and Hackney Diamonds:
“IN THE PETER Jackson-directed video for the just-released “Now and Then” — touted as the “final Beatles song” — present-day Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are pleasantly haunted by the ghosts of John Lennon and George Harrison, and even their own younger selves. It’s hard not to think that life inside McCartney and Starr’s heads is a little bit like that on a daily basis, burdened as they are by the weight of history. And they may not be alone: “I walk the city at midnight/With the past strapped to my back,” Mick Jagger sings on “Get Close,” from Hackney Diamonds, the Rolling Stones‘ first new album of original songs in 18 years.
In their own ways, both acts transcended death itself to deliver new music within a few weeks of each other in 2023 — though only the Stones actually still exist as a working band. The new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now digs into the controversies and triumphs of both “Now and Then” (which used an AI tool to extract John Lennon’s vocals from a messy demo) and Hackney Diamonds. Angie Martoccio and Andy Greene join host Brian Hiatt for the discussion, which also includes a debate on that new Beatles video — is it moving or creepy? For the full episode, go here for the podcast provider of your choice, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just press play above.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone‘s weekly podcast, Rolling Stone Music Now, hosted by Brian Hiatt, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). Check out six years’ worth of episodes in the archive, including in-depth, career-spanning interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey, Halsey, Neil Young, Snoop Dogg, Brandi Carlile, Phoebe Bridgers, Rick Ross, Alicia Keys, the National, Ice Cube, Taylor Hawkins, Willow, Keith Richards, Robert Plant, Dua Lipa, Questlove, Killer Mike, Julian Casablancas, Sheryl Crow, Johnny Marr, Scott Weiland, Liam Gallagher, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, Elvis Costello, John Legend, Donald Fagen, Charlie Puth, Phil Collins, Justin Townes Earle, Stephen Malkmus, Sebastian Bach, Tom Petty, Eddie Van Halen, Kelly Clarkson, Pete Townshend, Bob Seger, the Zombies, and Gary Clark Jr. And look for dozens of episodes featuring genre-spanning discussions, debates, and explainers with Rolling Stone’s critics and reporters”.
I will come to these two almost historic releases that have stirred up this fascination. Two of the greatest bands ever still very much relevant – in very different ways – in 2023. The rawness and quality of Hackney Diamonds shows the stamina of The Rolling Stones. The fact that Now and Then sounds so glorious was a huge relief for fans of The Beatles. There really was this love for two bands who put out stunning music. Louder Sound had this to say about Hackney Diamonds:
“According to Mick Jagger, Hackney Diamonds producer/bassist Andrew Watt “kicked us up the arse”. Watt’s USP is his ability to put artists back in touch with who they actually are. He recently coaxed the remarkable Every Loser out of Iggy Pop by asking him: “Are you ready to be yourself?” And it seems he’s done it again, because the Rolling Stones haven’t delivered an album this quintessentially Stonesy in 40 years. That said, Hackney Diamonds is no museum piece. It’s a 21st-century record for a 21st-century audience that, with an old-school 48-minute duration, only ever leaves the listener hungry for more.
Opener and lead single Angry benefits from a contemporary production that doesn’t go too far. Watt plays it just right across the entire album, as he modernises the Stones without once dressing them in a sound that doesn’t suit them.
Following the muscular, riff-driven Get Close, Depending On You is a classic Stones ballad: pedal steel, subtle strings, cascading keyboards, and Jagger, ‘I’m too young to die, but too old to lose’ (with the merest suggestion of contemporising auto-tune) on heartbreakingly fine form.
The stroppy Bite My Head Off finds Paul McCartney pumping out a slack-jawed, punked-up bass solo and Keith being so unapologetically Keith that it’s all you can do not to punch the air. Whole Wide World boasts a chorus to die for (and Jagger never more deliciously ‘Lahndan’ in his over-sold vernacular), Dreamy Skies a reflective country blues with a melody line reminiscent of Short And Curlies, before two back-to-back Charlie Watts-featuring tracks (elsewhere Steve Jordan shines reliably), Chic-y floor-filler Mess It Up and Bill Wyman-benefitting textbook Stones rocker Live By The Sword, with loose-ass handclaps and miles of Keith and Ronnie’s intricately woven ancient art to unravel.
Driving Me Too Hard finds Jagger on the unfortunate end of a cruel, mistreating woman, and Tell Me Straight a mournful Keith musing: ‘Is my future all in the past?’ Gospel epic Sweet Sound Of Heaven is a Jagger master class, Lady GaGa in fine voice, with Stevie Wonder also in evidence, but as with all the album’s guest slots (Elton John also serves) no one outshines the Stones. Performances serve songs rather than egos.
And finally, Rolling Stone Blues (the Muddy Waters tune that gave the band their name) closes the circle. Raw, stripped, flawless, it’s an unspoken message for all who choose to receive it. Brilliant”.
There were some not completely sold on Now and Then. Many others were full of love and emotion when they heard Now and Then. It did get a lot of very positive reviews from the music press. This is what The Guardian said when they spent time with the most important song of this year:
“Last night, BBC One shifted its schedules to broadcast a film about the making of the “final” Beatles single, Now and Then. It was brief and rather moving, but it offered a tactfully bowdlerised version of events, understandably stepping around the parts of the story that might cause anyone to regard Now and Then with a wary eye. It talked about the surviving Beatles’ initial attempts to work up John Lennon’s late 70s demos in the mid-90s, but didn’t mention the slightly muted response the completed versions of Free as a Bird and Real Love received. It was the height of Britpop, the Beatles’ stock higher – and their influence on current music more obvious – than at any point since their split. And yet Free as a Bird – clearly released with the intention of bagging the Christmas No 1 spot, as the Beatles regularly did in the 60s – couldn’t dislodge Michael Jackson’s Earth Song from the top: by its second week in the charts, it was being outsold not just by Jackson, but Boyzone’s cover of Cat Stevens’ Father and Son.
Real Love, meanwhile, managed a couple of weeks in the Top 10 before disappearing (by week two, Boyzone were outselling that as well). Perhaps it was stymied by Radio 1’s disinclination to play it, which led Paul McCartney to pen an angry article in the Daily Mirror, decrying the station’s “kindergarten kings”: whatever your take on the issue, there was something a bit unedifying about the Beatles’ return ending with Macca fulminating about Radio 1’s ageism à la Status Quo. Moreover, the overdubbed recordings had an eerie, uncanny valley quality. Everyone involved had clearly done their best with the technology available but there was no getting around the fact that Lennon’s voice sounded ghostly.
The new film discussed technical issues hampering the surviving Beatles’ intention to rework Now and Then in the mid-90s as well: there were meant to be three “new” Beatles songs, one for each volume of the Anthology compilations, but the sessions for this song were abandoned as Lennon’s vocals and piano couldn’t be separated for the new mix. This was a slightly different version of events to the one given by McCartney a decade ago. Then, he claimed the late George Harrison – always the most unbiddable ex-Beatle – had singlehandedly drawn the sessions to a close by describing Now and Then as “fucking rubbish”. (“But it’s John!” McCartney had apparently protested, to no avail: “This is fucking rubbish,” Harrison countered.) Indeed, Harrison seemed unsure about the whole idea of reworking Lennon’s material. “I hope someone does this to all my crap demos after I’m dead – turn them into hit songs,” he subsequently remarked, which perhaps wasn’t the promotional boost for the new songs Apple was after.
Listening to Now and Then, it’s hard to see what Harrison’s objection was in purely musical terms. A moody, reflective piano ballad, it’s clearly never going to supplant Strawberry Fields Forever or A Day in the Life in the affections of Beatles fans, but it’s a better song than Free as a Bird or Real Love. And posthumously reworked as a Beatles track, it definitely packs a greater emotional punch. If you want to be moved, the lyrics provide ample space in which do so. It’s doubtful whether Lennon had his fellow Beatles in mind when he wrote the song – although who knows? – but with a new middle eight sung in tandem by Lennon and McCartney, it very much becomes a song about the Beatles, expressing a yearning for their bond: “Now and then I miss you / Now and then I want you to be there for me.” There’s something similarly moving about the sound of a very Harrison-esque slide guitar solo being played by McCartney, who apparently balked at Harrison’s slide guitar additions to the mid-90s sessions as too reminiscent of his 1971 solo hit My Sweet Lord. That was precisely the kind of older brother-ish judgement that always rankled with Harrison: there’s something rather touching about McCartney paying tribute as if in shrugging concession that he might have been wrong, although Harrison’s actual presence seems to be restricted to acoustic rhythm guitar.
Advances in technology have solved the problems with Lennon’s vocals, which are nothing like the spectral presence that floated through Free As a Bird. The other potential vocal problem – at 80, McCartney’s voice has aged considerably since the remaining Beatles last reconvened – is solved by keeping him low in the mix: you feel his presence rather than notice it directly. The additions to a song that was obviously incomplete are seamless – again, unlike Free as a Bird, where McCartney’s new middle eight jarred slightly against Lennon’s original song – the arrangement is sumptuously tricked out with orchestration, but never stoops to deploying obviously Beatles-y signifiers. If you squint, you could just about imagine that it’s the Beatles playing together, which definitely wasn’t true of the mid-90s songs.
So Now and Then is a qualified success, although the question remains: what’s it for? It clearly doesn’t exist to make money, which none of the Beatles or their estates need – although the 7in single version retails for an eye-watering £18 – nor to burnish the Beatles’ existing catalogue, which hardly needs burnishing. Perhaps the real reason for its existence lies with McCartney. No Beatle tried harder to keep the band together or seemed more shattered by their split. And no Beatle has worked more tirelessly to affix a happy ending to their story, never failing to remind interviewers that the band were a tight studio unit to the end, regardless of what was happening outside of it, and that he and Lennon were friends again at the time of his death; re-releasing the Let It Be album without Phil Spector’s orchestrations (an addition that McCartney called the “breaking point” in the Beatles’ demise in the 1997 book Many Years from Now); green-lighting the Get Back documentary series, which showed their 1969 recording sessions in a happier light than the baleful Let It Be documentary; using the same technology behind Now and Then to duet with Lennon onstage at Glastonbury. The premature conclusion of the mid-90s sessions clearly niggled him: he has repeatedly mentioned finishing Now and Then in the intervening years. Now he has, an act of closure underlined by one of the lyrics he appended to Lennon’s: after the lines about missing you and wanting you to be there for me, he adds “always to return to me”.
There has this blend of embracing new music and some form of ‘nostalgia’ this year. In the sense we have seen older and legacy artists heralded. In some cases it has been because they have produced some of their best work. It is encouraging that there is room for legendary artists who have been around for decades and those who are fresh. Joni Mitchell recently celebrated her eightieth birthday. There has been a lot of new interest in her music. It is inspiring that some of the cornerstones of musical history are still relevant and out there. Paul Simon released Seven Psalms earlier this year (it is meant to be heard as a single piece; the songs are entirely acoustic). There is something historic regarding The Beatles and The Rolling Stones being talked about in the same breath in 2023. Think back sixty years. The Rolling Stones were still to release their debut single, yet they were a band coming through. The Beatles were already on the scene. It was a young and exciting moment for two groups who would change the world! In spite of The Beatles losing two members (John Lennon and George Harrison) and The Rolling Stones losing members (including, quite recently, Charlie Watts), they are very much still generating huge interesting and magnificent music. In such a hard and devastating year, it is no surprise that people were always going to be especially interested in anything new from The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Even if it does seem like a resurgence or new wave for both bands, it is more likely full stops. Now and Then is the final Beatles single. I am not sure The Rolling Stones have any plans to release another album (though they will continue to tour until they drop one feels!). I do like that people have compared 2023 The Beatles and The Rolling Stones to 1967 or the 1960s in general. Even if this is a one-off moment/occasion, the fact that these legends have put out new (amazing) music is a magical…
IF brief moment of history.