For Ringo Starr, who took to social media yesterday to celebrate the release of the new Beatles song “Now and Then” and to promote his recently released solo EP Rewind Forward, it’s all about looking to the past and the future. “Have a wonderful week, everyone. The former Beatles drummer remarked, “Peace and love, yeah,” in a video that was uploaded to his TikTok and Instagram profiles. “My new CD, Rewind Forward, was released just a week ago, and tomorrow is the last Beatle song ever, ‘Now and Then.'”
Starr announced that The Beatles’ “Red” and “Blue” compilations—officially named 1962-1966 and 1967-1970—will be reissued as enlarged volumes on November 10 in the video. She also held out a vinyl record of the “Now and Then” single. Starr said, “It’s so great,” and then laughed. “The beat goes on, peace and love, the beat goes on, peace and love,” she concluded. Starr writes a note to go along with the video, confessing, “I actually well [up] still every time.” [‘Now and Then,’ I hear. The four-track album Rewind Forward, which was published on October 13, has a song penned by his former bandmate Paul McCartney from the Beatles called “Feeling the Sunlight.” On the song, McCartney also played bass and provided backing vocals.
The EP also features three additional co-written songs: “Miss Jean,” co-written by Ian Hunter and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campell and Benmont Tench; “Shadows on the Wall,” co-written by Toto’s Steve Lukather and Joseph Williams; and the title track, co-written by Starr and his longtime studio partner Bruce Sugar. As previously mentioned, “Now and Then” was released as a digital single on Thursday, November 2, and vinyl and cassette copies will follow on Friday, November 3.
The demo that the late John Lennon recorded in the late 1970s and that McCartney, Starr, and the late George Harrison worked on but didn’t finish in the 1990s served as the foundation for the song. The song was then recently re-worked by McCartney and Starr with assistance from Peter Jackson, the audio technology director of The Beatles: Get Back docuseries, whose work was utilized to successfully extract John Lennon’s vocals from the demo tape.
The Beatles’ YouTube account debuted a short documentary about the creation of “Now and Then” on Wednesday. Starr says, “Since Peter removed John off [the demo] and gave him his own track, it was like John’s there. It’s a ways off. The Beatles’ official music video for “Now and Then,” which was directed by Michael Jackson, will debut on The Beatles’ YouTube channel on November 3 at 9 a.m. ET.
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