In a recent interview with The Associated Press promoting his upcoming EP, ‘Rewind Forward,’ Ringo Starr discussed the AI-assisted final Beatles song. He cleared up the doubts about John Lennon’s vocals in the new track by saying:
“Well, there’s no confusion. The confusion is that ‘Free As A Bird’ was on the same tape, and Jeff Lynne and a friend of his lifted John. Now, we had another way.”
Mentioning the production process, the drummer went on:
“Peter in New Zealand – the director man Jackson – said he had a machine called Mal after Mal Evans, and it can lift stuff out of a track and out of tape. So, it’s been lifted that way now. But it’s still four boys on that song.”
He confirmed that the vocals belonged to Lennon and added:
“You know, that is John. I mean, the rumors were like we just made it up. Like we would do that. For me, and Paul [McCartney] probably, it would be pointless if it wasn’t him. This is the last track ever that you’ll get the four Beatles on the track: John, Paul, George [Harrison], and Ringo.”
Although the surviving Beatles members didn’t reveal the song name, some media platforms predicted it to be ‘Now And Then,’ pointing out that the band scrapped it from the ‘Anthology’ project in the ’90s due to the problems on the demo.
Sean Ono Lennon’s explanations about the upcoming track supported the predictions, as he wrote on Twitter:
“The AI did nothing but clean the noise off of my dad’s vocal track. That’s all. Nothing else. The song was a demo Dad had recorded, and the other Beatles finished it off. Exactly like ‘Free as a Bird,’ only the original vocal was a bit dirtier on this one, so they cleaned up the noise with AI.”
You can watch Ringo Starr’s interview below.
