First things first: “Now and Then” is a real Beatles song. Hearing John and Paul sing the first chorus together, as they lock into the line “Now and then I miss you” — it’s intensely powerful, to say the least. Their voices join for a soulful confession of adult yearning, over George’s guitar, while Ringo plays the drums. Never maudlin, but deeply touching, like the Get Back movie. Despite the AI hysteria, there’s nothing faked, added, or changed in John’s vocal — just the clear sound of what he sang that day, at his piano in the Dakota. As Ringo says, “It was the closest we’ll ever come to having him back in the room.”

“Now and Then” hits much harder emotionally than the 1990s Anthology singles “Free As a Bird” or “Real Love,” which always sounded like spruced-up demos. Those two songs were footnotes to the Anthology documentary, produced by Jeff Lynne, refurbished by Paul, George, and Ringo. John sounded murky and faint, which was part of the pathos — you were just hearing a dim echo of his voice.

“Now and Then” comes from the same home cassette, which Yoko Ono gave to Paul, George, and Ringo after John’s death. But it’s a stronger song — and thanks to the latest audio technology, it’s possible to hear far more of John’s voice and piano. Peter Jackson’s sound team uses the “de-mixing” process from Get Back and last year’s Revolver box. The team, led by Emile de la Rey, uses WingNut Films MAL audio technology to isolate the vocal, the same way you can hear the Paul-John cafeteria conversation in Get Back, via a microphone hidden in a flowerpot.

“Now and Then” will drop worldwide on Nov. 2 at 2 p.m. GMT (10 a.m. EST). Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe are also releasing it as a physical single on vinyl and cassette, as a double A side with the band’s 1962 debut single, “Love Me Do.” (Yes, the version with Ringo on drums.) The acclaimed artist Ed Ruscha did the cover. The single brings the band’s story full circle, across 60 years, from nervous teenagers to weathered sages. Peter Jackson directed the video, a technical tour de force that debuts the next day, on Friday, Nov. 3. It’s the epic director’s first music video —probably the shortest thing he’s ever done.

A 12-minute film introducing the song debuts on Nov. 1, at 7:30 p.m. GMT (3:30 p.m. EST) written and directed by Oliver Murray. Now and Then — The Last Beatles Song is a perfect way to experience the tune for the first time — it tells how the song came to be, with Sean Ono Lennon, Paul, Ringo, and Jackson telling the story, from John’s piano (Sean stresses that his dad never stopped playing music in their home) to Paul and Ringo cutting their parts in 2023. The trailer is available to see now.

George recorded his guitar part in 1995, when the surviving “Threatles” had a bash at “Now and Then,” then left it unfinished. But Paul adds a new slide-guitar solo that’s “in George’s style,” as he explains in the film. “My tribute to George.”

Teasing the song last summer, Paul mentioned AI, setting off “bigger than Jesus” levels of controversy. As Martin says with a laugh, “It was funny, Paul — I think regrettably to a certain extent — announcing we were working on an AI Beatles track. There’s nothing about us which is either artificial or intelligent, really.”

Paul and Ringo began the project to finish the song their two mates left behind, with the full approval of Sean Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison. “It was certainly important to Paul that it sounds like a Beatles song,” Martin says. “You don’t want it to be some sort of novelty Beatles tribute record. There was no need, from my point of view anyway, for any sort of modernization. Ringo should be Ringo and he should be playing the drums, and that’s what Ringo does. He plays the drums without a click track and sounds like Ringo, and there’s no one better.”

Martin did a string arrangement, as his father George Martin did for so many Fabs classics. “I was basically ripping off my dad as much as possible,” Martin says. “But listen, if I can’t rip off my dad in a string arrangement for a Beatles record, when can I do it?”

“Now and Then” is produced by Paul and Martin, mixed by Spike Stent. It’s Macca’s first official Beatles production credit. “Paul arranged it completely,” Martin says. “But when Paul gave it to me, he’d changed the song structure and written the song, and done the guitar solo and pretty much done the vocals and guitars, and I just basically added some extra bits along with him.”

As a beautifully intricate detail, Paul and Giles mixed in backing vocals from three original Beatles classics. “I just thought if the Beatles were around, they’d probably sing harmonies at a certain point in the song,” Martin says. “And if there were backing vocals, it was important to have all the Beatles on it. So it’s taking just small elements from ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ ‘Here, There and Everywhere,’ and a bit of ‘Because.’ Obviously it wouldn’t be as good as the Beatles singing it live — but it is them singing live in the studio. That was important. There’s only four Beatles, and you might as well have them on a Beatles record.”

But nothing gets in the way of the song’s primal impact. “Obviously, it hasn’t been, but it sounds like John’s written it for Paul now, in a very emotional way,” Martin says. “It’s a bittersweet song, which is very John. But with a combination of happiness and regret. It’s like ‘In My Life’ in that respect.”

Ever since the 2017 Special Edition of Sgt. Pepper’s, which kicked off the revolutionary reissue series, many of the Red and Blue tracks have been mixed, including the ones from the White Album (2018), Abbey Road (2019), Let It Be (2021), and Revolver (2022), plus the remixed tracks from the 2015 1 comp reissue. The remaining tracks have been been newly mixed by Martin and Okell, using the “de-mixing” technology of Jackson and his WingNut Films audio team. If you heard what this technology did for Revolver — giving every last drum on Ringo’s kit the room to go boom — you have a rough idea of how revelatory it is to hear these songs get de-mixed. “Drive My Car,” “Day Tripper,” “Twist and Shout,” and “You Can’t Do That” have never thundered like this before. As Martin admits, “I never thought it would happen.”

He’s said for years that the raw primitive early recordings were too technically limited to thrive with this kind of mix. But even he admits surprise. “I’m not really one for hyperbole, as you know,” he says. “Technically, on the early tracks, it’s completely mind-blowing to me how we made them sound. I didn’t think it was possible for us to do that to the early tracks. As I’ve told you, I didn’t think that we could do the work we’ve done on things like ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ or ‘All My Loving’ or ‘Twist and Shout.’ The power of Ringo’s drumming, for example, on those early tracks, it’s been unearthed. But the playing is just really good. That’s joy.”

As Martin notes, the late Beatles do better on streaming services — especially Abbey Road, with its solid-state sound. “You look at the most-streamed Beatles records, and it’s mostly late stuff,” Martin says. “Abbey Road is their most successful album as far as that goes. The songs just sound more modern, on a purely sonic level.” A goal of this project was to give the early recordings the same clarity and punch. “I think with the early Red Album now, we’re getting close to that, and it changes the dynamic of how they’re perceived. It’s like, as Ringo says, ‘We’re just a bunch of punks.’ And now they really sound like a bunch of punks! This is four guys in a room making a racket, which is what those early records were.”