The title is misleading. McCarney used machine learning to isolate Lennon’s vocals from a badly recorded demo tape - one that the group (largely at Harrison’s request) abandoned during their “Anthology” recording sessions.
Kind of melancholic as this will be the last Beatles song, and not even the entire group, as it was never fully worked on, I don’t know if there are guitar tracks by Harrison that could contribute to this song.
Paul McCartney used machine learning to isolate Lennon Vocals that were thought to be unsalvageable - that’s good
So now he can release a track against the request of George Harrison - that’s bad
I consider myself more than moderately steeped in Beatles lore but I hadn’t heard about the “drama” surrounding this song during the Anthology sessions. Does anyone know the nature of George’s opposition to the song?
This was the mindset that drove Harrison out of The Beatles. I might have the anecdote wrong, but what I gather was Lennon was always the band’s leader, but when he started to “check out” (as someone put it, he basically “won the lottery” as far as fame and fortune and was distractedly in love), McCartney stepped up to “substitute lead” and was a bit overbearing. Harrison, being largely ignored and dismissed finally said “I’m done” which served as a slap Lennon and McCartney needed.
McCartney has a hubris which never changed. I am fairly certain he truly believes that he is doing the right thing and that George would have approved if he could have heard the recovered vocals.
I just don’t know if this could truly be a “Beatles” song, “Yesterday” notwithstanding, without some input from George as well, but I can’t see that happening - it would be a monumental coincidence if there was some track Harrison had that somehow dovetailed into an unfinished fragment of a track Lennon left behind. The only way I could possibly see it is if Dhani Harrison is somehow involved to speak on his father’s behalf.
I’m not sure how I’d feel about that song being completed and released now. Not that I’m against it, just… Confused.
I see it more as one last farewell, taking advantage of the advances in technology. Apparently the Get Back movie inspired this move, as Peter Jackson used machine learning to isolate the dialog. The song McCartney chose was one he really wanted on the first Anthology album, but the sound quality was just too bad. It’s possible that reclaiming this song never left his “bucket list.”
A part of me wonders if the surviving Beatles ever regretted never making the overtures to “reunite” when the could have, especially when there was a renaissance of band reunions some time after Lennon’s death, and there is now something of a “renaissance” as the younger generations rediscover older music.
For me, The Beatles were always in the music background - much of their later material were mainstays on classic rock FM stations when I was a kid. Now folks who have only known streaming are rediscovering this band (and others). Back on the Reddit there was a dedicated subreddit for The Beatles, and it was always a delight to see “kids” discover the band. As an old person, it’s kind of surreal to see modern technology and a mid-20th century band generate new music, but for the Beatles, this is pretty much on-brand: much of their music was pushing to see what they could do with the latest and greatest advances.
