Artificial intelligence was used to extract John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to create “the last Beatles record,” Paul McCartney revealed on Tuesday. McCartney, 80, told the BBC that the technology was used to isolate the Beatles’ vocals from background noises while filming filmmaker Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series “The Beatles: Get Back.” He stated that the “new” song will be published later this year.
Jackson was “able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette and a piano,” McCartney told BBC radio. “He could separate them with AI, he’d tell the machine ‘That’s a voice, this is a guitar, lose the guitar’.”
“So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles record, it was a demo that John had that we worked on,” he added. “We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI so then we could mix the record as you would do. It gives you some sort of leeway.”
McCartney did not name the demo, but the BBC and others speculated that it was an unfinished 1978 love ballad by John Lennon called “Now and Then.” The demo was contained on a cassette labeled “For Paul” that McCartney had received from John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, the day after the Beatles’ death, the BBC reported.
McCartney’s exploration of AI and “Duet” with Lennon, and the unveiling of the “Eyes of the Storm” exhibition
McCartney described AI technology as “kind of scary but exciting,” adding: “We will just have to see where that leads.” The same technology allowed McCartney to practically “duet” with Lennon, who was assassinated in 1980, on “I’ve Got a Feeling” at Glastonbury Festival last year.
Later this month, the singer-songwriter will debut an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London showcasing previously unseen images he took during the early days of the Beatles during “Beatlemania,” when the band catapulted to worldwide renown.
The exhibition, titled “Eyes of the Storm,” features over 250 photographs taken by McCartney between 1963 and 1964, including pictures of Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and John Lennon, as well as Beatles manager Brian Epstein. This story has been corrected to show that the title of McCartney’s photo exhibition is “Eyes of the Storm,” not “Eye of the Storm.”
