Director of The Beatles’ last song video ‘Now And Then’ explains why he was stressed out

MUMBAI — Peter Jackson, director of the video of the last song of The Beatles, ‘Now And Then’, has said he was stressed about putting it together because of the lack of easy access to the relevant footage. Jackson is best known as the celebrated director of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy.

However, Paul and Ringo shot footage of themselves performing and sent that to Peter, who shared that he is a huge fan of The Beatles.

The poignant and humorous video invites viewers to celebrate The Beatles’ timeless and enduring love for one another with John, Paul, George and Ringo as they create the last Beatles song.

Talking about the challenges, Peter said: “To be honest, just thinking about the responsibility of having to make a music video worthy of the last song The Beatles will ever release produced a collection of anxieties almost too overwhelming to deal with. My lifelong love of The Beatles collided into a wall of sheer terror at the thought of letting everyone down.”

He continued: “This created intense insecurity in me because I’d never made a music video before, and was not able to imagine how I could even begin to create one for a band that broke up over 50 years ago, had never actually performed the song, and had half of its members no longer with us. It was going to be far easier to do a runner. I just needed a little time to figure out a good reason for turning The Beatles down – so I never actually agreed to make the music video for ‘Now And Then’.”

 “I told Apple how the lack of suitable footage worried me. We’d need to use a lot of rare and unseen film, but there’s very little … Nothing at all seemed to exist showing Paul, George and Ringo working on Now And Then in 1995 … There’s not much footage of John in the mid-seventies when he wrote the demo … I grizzled about the lack of unseen Beatles footage from the 1960s … And they didn’t even shoot any footage showing Paul and Ringo working on the song last year,” he added.

 “A Beatles music video must have great Beatles footage at its core. There’s no way actors or CGI Beatles should be used. Every shot of The Beatles needed to be genuine. Paul and Ringo shot footage of themselves performing and sent that to me. Footage over 14 hours of long forgotten film shot during the 1995 recording sessions, including several hours of Paul, George and Ringo working on ‘Now And Then’ was unearthed”, he concluded.

This poignant short film, directed by Oliver Murray, tells the story behind the last Beatles song, with exclusive footage and commentary from Paul, Ringo, George, Sean Ono Lennon and Peter Jackson.

The music video has been released by Apple, Capitol and UMe.

Also read: Paul McCartney ‘felt like he was reuniting with John Lennon’ for new Beatles song