Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr worked on the John Lennon demo ‘Now And Then’ on 20 and 21 March 1995.
Also known as ‘I Don’t Want To Lose You’ and ‘Miss You’, ‘Now And Then’ was recorded by Lennon in 1979 at his home at the Dakota Building in New York City.
In January 1994 Yoko Ono gave Paul McCartney two cassettes of Lennon’s home recordings, which included a number of incomplete and previously unreleased songs. They included ‘Free As A Bird’, ‘Real Love’, ‘Grow Old With Me’, and ‘Now And Then’.
On 20 and 21 March 1995 the three surviving former Beatles began constructing a backing track to be added to Lennon’s demo of ‘Now And Then’. However, during the second day work on the song ended.
According to McCartney, George Harrison “didn’t want to do it,” possibly because the song needed to be extensively rewritten before it could be released. Another factor was a humming sound on Lennon’s demo which proved hard to mask.
It was one day – one afternoon, really – messing with it. The song had a chorus but is almost totally lacking in verses. We did the backing track, a rough go that we really didn’t finish.
‘Now And Then’ had been considered as a third reunion single in 1996. It was replaced on Anthology 3 by the orchestral track ‘A Beginning’, recorded in 1968 as an unused introduction for ‘Don’t Pass Me By’.
There was one more that we didn’t do, which was a pity. It didn’t have a very good title, it needed a bit of reworking, but it had a beautiful verse and it had John singing it. But George didn’t wanna do it.
Q magazine, November 2006
‘Now And Then’ remained incomplete until work resumed in 2022 and 2023. It was released on 2 November 2023.