George Harrison's son moved to tears by Now and Then
Peter Jackson has detailed the "overwhelming" task of creating the music video for Now and Then.
The music video for The Beatles' highly-anticipated emotional farewell song Now and Then will premiere worldwide on Friday (3rd November).
The film, which marks filmmaker Peter Jackson’s first foray into music video production, celebrates the band's enduring love for one another as they create the last Beatles song.
And now Jackson has revealed that the son of late guitarist George Harrison – who was part of the legendary band alongside Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr – was "immediately" moved when he saw the music video for the track.
Talking about how he approached the immense task of creating the last ever video for the band, Jackson (The Beatles: Get Back) said in an interview on the official Beatles website: "Their contribution to the world is too immense, and their wondrous gift of music has become part of our DNA and now defies description.
"I realised we needed the imagination of every viewer to do what we couldn’t, and have each viewer create their own personal moment of farewell to The Beatles – but we had to gently steer everyone to that place.
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"I had some vague ideas, but didn’t really know how to achieve this."
Talking about the late Harrison's son's reaction to the music video, he continued: "Fortunately, Dhani Harrison happened to be visiting NZ at this time. I discussed the ending with him, and described one vague idea I’d been toying with.
"His eyes immediately filled with tears - so that is the way we went."
Reflecting further on how he was initially reluctant when Apple asked him to make the music video, Jackson added: "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.
"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."
Now and Then was originally written and recorded in the late 1970s by the late John Lennon after The Beatles broke up, but is being released with the help of artificial intelligence, which was used to separate Lennon’s vocals from an old demo.
As well as this, Now and Then also features electric and acoustic guitar recordings from 1995 by the late Harrison, back-up vocals from Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, drums by Starr, and bass, piano and a slide guitar solo from McCartney.
In the UK, Now and Then will first be played on BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music at 2pm on Thursday, with the music video set to premiere 24 hours later on The Beatles' YouTube channel.
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