Honestly, Forget About India. I Need To Know In Detail What Occurred On That New York Trip If We’re

Now and Then

1977

Now and Then: I know it's true / It's all because of you

And if I make it through / It's all because of you / And now and then / If we must start again / Well, we will know for sure / That I love you

I don't wanna lose you, oh no / Abuse you or confuse you / Oh no, no, sweet darlin' / But if you have to go away / If you have to go, well you the reason [?]

Now and then / I miss you / Oh, now and then / I want you to return to me / 'Til you return to me / I know it's true / It's all because of you / And if you go away / I know you could never stay

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1978

Love Awake: Love awake to the day / When we can make our love awake / Lord knows we need it any time we can get it / But we forget it every now and then / But if you don't feel it, later on, you'll regret it / And if we let it we could set it free, you and me

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1981

My Old Friend: If I told you how I feel / Oh, it wouldn’t sound so real / ‘Cause emotions, they are just now settin’ in / But it sure is great to know / That wherever we may go / We can always be the best of friends

My old friend, / Thanks for inviting me in / My old friend, / May this goodbye never mean the end / If we never meet again this side of life / In a little while, over yonder, / Where it’s peace and quiet / My old friend, / Won’t you think about me every now and then

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Well, it was something that I’ll never live long enough to forget. It happened in February of 1981 and as the world all knows, and never will forget, in December of 1980 when John Lennon was taken away from us, and so this was the following year, in February. I wrote the song about and for Paul McCartney. I did it because he was so kind to invite me down to this beautiful island of Montserrat with Stevie Wonder. Ringo was there, just had a wonderful time. I flew down by myself. Paul and Linda met me with a jeep on the (center) airfield with a little single engine plane and took me across the mountains we were like kids again, and it was a wonderful time, and I wanted to do… I didn’t want to cry when I left after staying down there, and I’m a big crybaby! If something moves me, I’ll just choke up… I talk about it. I thought that would happen, so the night before, I just wrote how I felt on the isle of Montserrat on every shell, forget a country boy with a guitar and a song you invited me, and you treated me like kin, and you’ve given me a reason to go on. So my old friend, think about me every now and then. I sang it for Paul, at about 10:00 the next morning. I was scheduled to leave flying again in the little single engine aircraft to the island of Antigua where I was flying commercial back to Atlanta and on to Nashville and back to Jackson, where I live here. I sang it, he said “Carl, it’s beautiful… would you sing it again?” and I said. “Sure, man.” He said “wait just a minute,” and he got Linda in there, and they sat on the floor, I sat on his old Fender twin reverb amplifier, with a guitar, I did however notice a microphone over there. I didn’t pay that much attention to it, but George Martin recorded it and after I finished singing the song to Paul, he was crying, tears were rolling down his pretty cheeks, and they’re pretty to me just like they are to the rest of the world. I think he’s a very handsome boy and always did. He’s even handsomer when he’s crying. And Linda said, “Carl, thank you so much.” I said, “Linda, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to make you cry.” She said, “But he’s crying and he needed to. He hasn’t been able to really break down since that happened to John.” I mean he stepped outside of the room, out by the pool, and he just had his handkerchief out, and he was going at it. And she put her arm around me and said, “But how did you know?” I said, “Know what, Linda? I don’t know what you’re talking about?” She said “There’s two people in the world that know what John Lennon said to Paul, the last thing he said to him. Me and Paul are the only two that know that, but now there’s three and one of you… you know it. I said, “Girl, you’re freaking me out! I don’t know what you’re talking about!” She said the last words that John Lennon said to Paul in the hallway of the Dakota building were… he patted him on the shoulder, and said, ‘Think about me every now and then, old friend.’ Q: That’s just amazing… And she said, here you are, that’s what you just sang, and how did you know? And I said I didn’t know it, gosh, I didn’t know it. But McCartney really feels that Lennon sent me that song, he really does.

— Carl Perkins, interviewed for Goldmine (September 26, 1986).

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1994

Paul had gone to Yoko to ask if she had any of John’s songs kicking around. The deal was that Paul would induct John into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in return. Yoko’s a generous person in that respect, so she actually gave him three songs – 'Free As A Bird' and 'Real Love' were worked up and released, the last one wasn’t.

— Source close to the Anthology project, quoted in the Sunday Express (April 29, 2007).

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1995

It was one day – one afternoon, really – messing with it. The song had a chorus but is almost totally lacking in verses. We did the backing track, a rough go that we really didn’t finish. It was sort of a bluesy sort of ballad, I suppose, in A minor. It was a very sweet song. I liked it a lot. Should it ever be completed it would probably end up as either ‘Now And Then’ or ‘Miss You’. I wished we could have finished it.

— Jeff Lynne, quoted in the Sunday Express (April 29, 2007).

It didn’t have a very good title, it needed a bit of reworking, but it had a beautiful verse and it had John singing it. [But] George didn’t like it. The Beatles being a democracy, we didn’t do it.

— Paul McCartney, interviewed for Q Magazine (November 2006).

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2007

There are a couple of things which may surface at some point. You see, with the Beatles, there’s always a surprise somewhere along the line. We did ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’, those two songs of John’s, and that was very exciting, very moving for me and very comfortable having his voice in my headphones in the studio again. And there was a third track, another song we had our eyes on called ‘Now And Then’. l actually wanted to do it on Anthology 3, but we didn’t all agree. But things change and the thing is that it might not go away. There was only one of us who didn’t want to do it. lt would have meant a lot of hard work, the song would have needed a lot of re-writing and people would have had to be very patient with us. But there are these one or two things lurking in the bushes. The Beatles might just raise their ugly little heads again…

— Paul McCartney, quoted in the Sunday Express (April 29, 2007).

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2012

And there was another one we started working on, but George went off it. We were like, ‘No George, this is John’. He said, ‘It’s still rubbish’. ‘Ok, then’. So that one is still lingering around. I’m gonna nick it with Jeff and do it. Finish it, one of these days.

— Paul McCartney, interviewed for the “Mr Blue Sky: The Story of Jeff Lynne & ELO” documentary (2012).

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2018

Get Enough: It was a time when we walked by the docks / I told you, "I need you all of my life" / And watching the tugs rolling by together / Do you remember? / Do you remember the lights on the shore? / How they reflected the rain on the road? / I believed that you love me alone / It was real / Do you remember? / Now and then I see your face / I've been wanting a lovin’ embrace / I've been looking for love, but it gets me nowhere / Oh, yeah, yeah

Get enough, get enough, get enough of (Your love) (x2) / I can't get enough of / Of you

It was a time we were all full of hope / Saw the future burning bright / As we watched the moon rollin’ out to sea / Do you remember? / But those days are erased from my mind / Yeah, I've left all those old days behind / But still I remember your face forever, forever

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If I'm going to see a face in a painting, it's highly likely to be his.

— Paul McCartney, interviewed by Diane Sawyer for ABC News (November 2, 2000).

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2022

And then 'Now and Then’ just kind of languished in a cupboard and we didn’t do anything with it. I kept saying, “You know, maybe we should do something with this, seems a bit—” “Hm, I don’t know…” There wasn’t a great desire to do anything with it. So it hung around for a while. Years! And every so often, I’d kind of go to the cupboard and think, “There’s a new song in there! We should do it! We gotta do it!” But it’d go back in the cupboard.

— Paul McCartney, in BBC Sounds Eras: The Beatles (November 2, 2023).

I got a phone call from Paul saying, “Is it possible to use that [MAL] technology for another project I’ve been thinking about? […] Would it be possible to take John’s vocal and clean it up and get rid of everything else? Because that would allow us to finish this Beatles song.” And absolutely, it didn’t take me more than about a second to get back to him and say, “Of course we can do it!”

— Peter Jackson, in BBC Sounds Eras: The Beatles (November 2, 2023).

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2023

Now and Then: I know it’s true / It’s all because of you / And if I make it through / It’s all because of you

And now and then / If we must start again / Well we will know for sure / That I will love you

Now and then / I miss you / Oh now and then / I want you to be there for me / Always to return to me

I know it’s true / It’s all because of you / And if you go away / I know you’ll never stay

Now and then / I miss you / Oh now and then / I want you to be there for me

I know it’s true / It’s all because of you / And if I make it through / It’s all because of you

.

I do feel as though ‘Now and Then’ is a love letter to Paul written by John. I mean, I've never really asked Paul about it, and I'm not sure whether Paul would say, ‘Oh, that's definitely it,' because he wouldn't want to second guess John. But that's the sense I get. And I get the feeling that's why Paul was so determined to finish it.

— Giles Martin, interviewed for PEOPLE magazine (October 26, 2023).

When you say you enjoy 'Now and Then', that’s really nice, because that’s why we do it. We do it so people can listen to stuff and not just hear it. 'Now and Then' sounds like a love song. It sounds like a song that John wrote for Paul, and the other Beatles: “I miss you/ Now and then.” It sounds like Paul has gone there, which I think he did. You know, no one told Paul to go and do it, and Paul didn’t go, This would be a great exercise for the Red and Blue Album. He was at home in the studio. He dug on the record and started working on it, because it’s his mate. And he really misses John. I mean, that’s the truth. They broke up, and John died nine years later. It really isn’t very long.

— Giles Martin, interviewed for GRAMMYS (October 26, 2023).

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When I remember the Beatles, I remember the joy, the talent, the humor, the love. And I think, if people remembered us for that — for those things — I’d be very happy.

— Paul McCartney, in BBC Sounds Eras: The Beatles (November 2, 2023).

“How Lucky Was I, to have those men in my life?”

I think Paul really spoke for all of us 😭

(The cropped versions are wallpaper friendly! 🥰)

the way George is talking, I'm crying

what are you're favorite paul/george quotes?

“I’ve never known two people that love each other so much, and don’t even realize it.” – Eric Clapton

“ I believe Paul missed George as much as — if not more than — anybody.” – Eric clapton

“I got married in 1966 and Paul was my best man. He cancelled his holiday to do it. Then he got drunk and put a bow-and-arrow through the car window. But until then it was great.” – George

“I just know that whatever we’ve been through, there’s always been something there to tie us together” – George

‘The last time I met him, he was very sick and I held his hand for four hours. As I was doing it I was thinking “I’ve never held his hand before, ever. This is not what two Liverpool fellas do, no matter how well you know each other.” I kept thinking, “he’s going to smack me here.” But he didn’t. He just stroked my hand with his thumb and I thought “Ah, this is OK, this is life. It’s tough but it’s lovely. That’s how it is.” I knew George before I knew any of the others and I loved that man. I’m so proud to have known him.” - Paul

“Underneath it all, I believe that Paul sincerely loved George; and at some level George loved Paul as well. ” – Peter Dogett

“George told me once that I smelt like home. I got all paranoid, you know, thinking I smelt of fish and chip shops or dirty bars or something. But he said no, I just always smelt of home.” - Paul

“Paul is very protective of George.” – Bob Smeaton

“George was always known as the quiet one, but he had a wicked sense of humour. He and Paul tricked two fans into thinking that they were really brothers and George signed his name “George McCartney” for them.” - Denise Theophilus

““They used to jump on me. George used to wake me up by tickling my feet.” – Paul

“There was this guy called Ritter who was in our group at school, and George was in the younger group, and I remember we’d been standing around at playground and I’d tried to introduce George to Ritter, introduce him into my peer group. And being a year younger it was kind of difficult. I said, ‘Hey, this is George Harrison. He’s a mate of mine. We get on the same bus together.’ And we’d been sitting around, and George suddenly head-butted this friend of mine.When asked for the reason for the headbutt, George replied: ‘He wasn’t worthy of your friendship.” – Paul

Interviewer: Is matrimony in the immediate future for the two unmarried members of your group? Paul: Matrimony is not in the immediate future. George: Paul won’t have me.

“God, my mate George, isn’t he a good-looking boy!” - Paul

“Thing is, there’s a lot about me and George that the public don’t know about, and I like it better that way. That night was very personal, and very special to me. It’s one of my favourite memories.” – Paul

“I knew George long before the others. We were good chums despite his tender years as it seemed to me then. We were always together.” – Paul McCartney

“It used to be PaulnGeorge… as one word. They were the kids from the grammar school. That’s how we referred to them. For ages we didn’t even know George really, he was just ‘Paul’s mate’.” – Len Garry

“In Liverpool, Paul would come round my house and we’d play in the living room. Paul knocked me out with his singing especially, although I remember him being a little embarrassed to really sing out, seeing as we were stuck right in the middle of my parents place with my whole family walking about. He said he felt funny singing about love and stuff around my dad.” — George

 I think we have now grown old enough to realize that we’re both pretty damn cute!” - George 

“He was my little baby brother” - Paul

That feeling when the married couple next to you starts squabbling

‘The Big Beat Craze’, Daily Mirror, 10th September 1963

THE BEATLES being presented with an award from Radio Caroline Awards while on set filming for HELP!. Twickenham Film Studios, London, England. April 6th 1965.

it'll pass

“you could be mine” at ritz theatre, 1991

FHIS IS SO SICK AND TWISTED. “John had to have a warm and loving side for me to stand him all those years” FUCKFCKUK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

“John and I were two of the luckiest people in the twentieth century to have found each other” IS LITERALLY VILLAINOUS. LUCKIEST PEOPLE ALIVE IJ YHE WORLD JUST TO KNOW EACH OTHER. TO HAVE FOUND EACH OTHER

“He was absolutely wonderful and I did love him” PAUL MCCARTNEY WHEN I CATCH YOU