Fallon's Town Talk: Release of a new Beatles single brings excitement and masterful marketing
‘Now And Then’, the last Beatles song, has been a triumph of marketing.
A post on X (what used to be called a tweet) last week summed up the feelings of many people around the world. The person expressed wonder at the prospect, for the first time in his life, of being able to listen to a Beatles song on the day of its release.
‘Now And Then’, the last Beatles song, has been a triumph of marketing that would be the envy of Taylor Swift or Beyonce. However, that Joe Duffy on ‘Liveline’ got to play the song for the first time on RTÉ Radio was probably not what the marketing people had in mind.
Cutting-edge modern technology and the assiduous work of film director Peter Jackson have allowed John Lennon’s voice to be extracted from a cassette tape he made in 1978, two years before his death.
With his inimitable enthusiasm and a desire to bookend his complicated relationship with John Lennon on a positive note, Paul McCartney drove the process to bring ‘Now and Then’ to fruition. Ringo Starr joined in with trademark enthusiasm and the song could become the band’s 18th UK No 1.
A similar frisson of excitement erupted in 1995 when The Beatles released a single called ‘Free as a Bird’, again rescued from an old Lennon demo tape, which proved a hit, but that was more down to novelty value than the quality of the song. At the time the late George Harrison was dismissive of doing the same with ‘Now and Then’.
However, the advancements in technology have made Lennon’s voice much clearer than was the case on ‘Free as a Bird’. The video dovetails together images of the Fab Four from their zenith, 1995 and the present day. It presses all the right emotional buttons and is a tribute to superbly seamless editing.
With poignant symmetry the B-side to ‘Now and Then’ is ‘Love Me Do’, the group’s first single. In a more ominous, but unavoidable, parallel, ‘Love Me Do’ came out at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, probably the nearest mankind has come to destroying itself. The release of ‘Now and Then’ coincides with a crisis in the Middle East which threatens to become a wider and potentially cataclysmic conflict.
So is ‘Now and Then’ any good? On first hearing, I wasn’t impressed, but the more I listen to it, the more I like it. It’s not a classic to join the myriad others in The Beatles' back catalogue. It doesn’t even rank among the hidden gems such as ‘Rain’, one of their most underrated songs. However, it’s better than ‘Free as a Bird’ and will probably gain in importance and significance over the years.
'Now and Then' has also stolen the thunder of The Rolling Stones who released a new album in October called ‘Hackney Diamonds’ and which features the final two songs that their fabled drummer, Charlie Watts, recorded prior to his death. For those of us who weren’t around for the battle between The Beatles and The Stones (which was another brilliant marketing ploy), it’s as if the ancient rivalry has been rekindled.
One of the early harbingers of Christmas is when friend of the column, John Scally from Curraghboy, gets in touch to let me know about his latest book. John is as prolific as ever going by the number of books of his on display in one bookshop in Thurles I visited last week.
John’s latest offering is called ‘100 Extraordinary Occasions’ and he let me know that two figures with strong associations with the ‘Roscommon Herald’ feature in the book.
The first is none other than another prolific writer, sports journalist Kevin Egan. John writes: “The world of Gaelic Games has produced its own classic hits. After Roscommon beat Galway in the 2019 Connacht final ‘The Roscommon Herald’s Kevin Egan tweeted his unique adaptation of a famous piece of Norwegian commentary: ‘Gráinne Seoige, Eamon Ó Cuiv, Nora Barnacle, Michael D. Higgins, Ronán Mullen, Gideon Ouseley, Joe Canning, Bishop Eamonn Casey, that ould wan that charges a fiver to read palms on Shop Street: ‘‘YOUR BOYS TOOK ONE HELL OF A BEATING!’’’ The other ‘Herald’ connection is provided by columnist and renowned Shannonside commentator Willie Hegarty. Two days after Brexit happened in 2020, Roscommon travelled to play Fermanagh in the national league and Willie observed, “Roscommon became the first team to play a League game outside the EU since 1972.”
