My Review: The Beatles - Now and Then

The Beatles - Now and Then

There are magics that require no explanation, no disturbance, no further gravity to sink in. They wander, they skim, they specify, remaining free to be untouchable. Continuing in time an untiring, precise, straightforward race to enter Olympus, where perfection reigns supreme. You can argue all you want about everything, not about this event, because the song released under the acronym The Beatles is such and should be proportioned to a global significance that surpasses time as the four are, without a doubt, the most influential band, and not only, of all time. They are the earthly rulers of a beauty already recognised by the vault of heaven. Rather than a comeback here we speak of an assemblage operation, in order to make eternal and infinite the need for the idea that this tank of precious fuel knows no end. Whether it was technology that favoured it matters little. It really does. The song is a poignant testimony to how simplicity has been the spark of their every production, to touch the most accessible, strongest emotions, in an unquestionable gathering. One cries, one cringes at the knowledge that the text, in its fluidity, guarantees access to understanding. The fact that it does not please us, does not touch the heart does not matter: it exists as a vehicle for encounters, for messages to be verbalised, for unbridled races within. And because death does not belong to the gods.

As is often the case with the four from Liverpool, the music is an ambassador of delicacy, of a poignant, perceptible inclination towards that which brings pain, with John Lennon's voice that seems to pierce the clouds and fall in a slow flight towards our ears that become an embrace. There are certainties that need the right mode to be expressed, and in this soft jewel everything comes out without friction, in an earthly wander that gathers beats and thoughts, steeped in grey worries and doubts, and the emblematic truth that distance has always been an unsolved problem. And nothing certifies this more than love. A text that addresses, specifically, the relationship with time in the field of love, where everything can tarnish strength and convictions. Two hundred and forty-eight seconds of an hourglass that stirs, shakes, opens wide its entirety within our fragility, distributing, with its soft gait, within our mental exercise, petals that seem to know immortality. The style of the world's most famous cockroaches is intact, it does not seem true that they have crossed the decades of absence reappearing as if nothing had changed. Instead... We were talking about magic, and it is all true. Harmony reigns supreme, the arrangements, minimalist, and the unexaggerated production allow the song to have a notable place in their journey. In what period would you place this song? Sixties? Seventies? Now? No: there is no answer because of this ability, always incredible, that makes their artistic work able to escape time, preceding it, to settle, like a flower on a rock, in the place of perfection. And then: being able to make the impossible real, and do it in the perfect way, could only happen to The Beatles. The verse, the refrain, embracing and convincing, testify to how in just a few minutes one can be part of an enchantment, irresistible. Compact and poignant, it transfers what was nothing more than a Lennon demo to Planet Beatles: whether it is right, wrong, reasonable, it is of little use because that musical line-up is beyond reason, due to the fact that certain appointments are unfailing, dutiful, and nothing should find room to question that. 

A perfect Pop Song that makes its placement in a valley full of people listening imaginable, to make the embrace with heaven possible. Slow, quick to touch an inevitable addiction, the song sums up and expands the capabilities of those four phenomenons, proving that, however much technology has facilitated this creative process, it all comes from a humanity, from an infinite, unquestionable class. That it is then a text that deals with distance that brings people closer together again demonstrates their absolute power. There is nothing nostalgic about this song, given its depth. Rather, and this is inevitable, time will be wasted accusing the two living Beatles of wanting to take advantage of this new production. But they always did, all four of them together, flooding our hearts with perfectly connected quantity and quality. Nothing has changed. Because a Beatles composition can make a day something special: NOW AND THEN...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

16th November 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW55J2zE3N4