Paul McCartney clarifies "AI Beatles" story: "It's all real and we all play on it"

23 June 2023, 13:11

The superstar has tried to calm worries over reports of the "final" single from the Fab Four, claiming "nothing has been artificially created".

Sir Paul McCartney has insisted there will be nothing "artificially or synthetically created" on the forthcoming "final" Beatles song.

The legend revealed last week work had been finished on a "new" track by the Fab Four using Artificial Intelligence (AI), but he's now spoken out again to clarify the track doesn't feature a digitally-generated likenesses of the late John Lennon and George Harrison.

McCartney tweeted: "Been great to see such an exciting response to our forthcoming Beatles project. No one is more excited than us to be sharing something with you later in the year.

"We’ve seen some confusion and speculation about it. Seems to be a lot of guess work out there. Can’t say too much at this stage but to be clear, nothing has been artificially or synthetically created.

"It’s all real and we all play on it. We cleaned up some existing recordings - a process which has gone on for years.

"We hope you love it as much as we do. More news in due course - Paul."

McCartney had previously explained AI had been used to make Lennon's vocals on the song "pure".

He told BBC Radio 4: “When we came to make what will be the last Beatles record, it was a demo that John had. We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI. Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do.”

The Beatles - Free As A Bird

Sir Peter Jackson's 2021 Beatles documentary Get Back had promoted McCartney and the other surviving Beatle, Ringo Starr, to complete the song because Paul explained the director “was able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette.”

He added: “We had John’s voice and a piano and he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine, ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar'."

It's thought that the song is an old Lennon demo called Now And Then that was pitched as the third and final track to be reworked for the Beatles Anthology series in 1995 and '96.

NOW AND THEN | PIANO DEMO | JOHN LENNON

Two John Lennon demos - Free As A Bird and Real Love - had been augmented by McCartney, Harrison and Starr in collaboration with producer Jeff Lynne, but Now And Then was vetoed by Harrison over concerns about the quality of the surviving tape.

Lennon's widow Yoko Ono handed the tapes over to McCartney in 1994, which also included the song Grow Old With Me. The recording of Now And Then, which dates from 1979, was marred by a hum on the soundtrack and, according to Lynne, was just a chorus without any proper verses.

McCartney told Q magazine in 1997: "George didn't like it. The Beatles being a democracy, we didn't do it."

It's hoped, then, that AI will isolated Lennon's voice perfectly to allow McCartney and Starr to add extra instrumentation.

AISIS - The Lost Tapes / Vol.1 (In Style of Oasis / Liam Gallagher - AI Mixtape/Album)

AI songs are the latest worry in the music industry, raising concerns that "new" recordings can be created from existing tracks without the permission of the original artists or their relatives.

When asked about the numerous AI "Oasis songs" that have cropped up on YouTube, Noel Gallagher dismissed the fears: "There’s no soul to it, no feeling."

He told The Sun: "Someone sent me those Oasis AI songs — well, it was called AI-sis. And I thought, ‘What’s the point of this?’ It’s as pointless as the people who make it.

"Then people are showing me Ringo Starr singing She’s Electric and Freddie Mercury singing Don’t Look Back In Anger. If that’s how you spend your lunch break, f*****g good on you."