Paul McCartney kept ‘Now And Then’ a secret from session musicians: “We couldn’t tell them it was a new Beatles song”

nme.com:

Paul McCartney has revealed that he kept The Beatles‘ ‘Now And Then’ a secret from the extra musicians who played on the track in the studio.The song, dubbed the “final” single from the Fab Four, came out today (November 2) following the release of an accompanying short film titled Now And Then – The Last Beatles Song.‘Now And Then’ stemmed from a demo tape recorded by the late John Lennon, and was completed with the help of AI technology – which lifted the songwriter’s vocals off the initial recording.McCartney and his former bandmate Ringo Starr built on the demo in the studio along with producers Jeff Lynne and Giles Martin, the latter of whom is the son of late Beatles producer George Martin.At one point in the short film, McCartney recalled the process of adding a string arrangement to the single during a session at the famous Capitol Studios in Hollywood, California.“Giles worked up an arrangement like Giles’ dad would have done in the old days,” he explained.“We had to put the music out on the stands for the musicians, but we couldn’t tell them it was a new Beatles song.

It was all a bit hush-hush. We pretended it was just something of mine.”The 12-minute film also aired on last night’s episode of The One Show.

After it played out, the programme spoke to violinist Charlie Bisharat who didn’t know until the broadcast that he was on the finished single.“It’s absolutely epic to be part of this,” he said. “We didn’t know at the time what it was.

Many times we work on projects, they don’t come out or they come out years later or something.“I had actually looked for this song many times online, and I thought, ‘Whatever happened to that?