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Sat 13 September 2025 17:45, UK
When The Beatles disbanded in 1970 after the release of Let It Be, the fact that the four members of the group all went on to forge their own solo careers and follow new ambitions made it evident that chances of a reunion were slim.
Given the legacy they had left behind, and the dozen spectacular records they had made together, there was little to no need to force a comeback, and with each of the respective members evidently flourishing by themselves throughout the 1970s, fans saw things in a similar light. There were, of course, people who never got the chance to see the band perform live who would undoubtedly have jumped at the chance of doing so, and who never had the opportunity to witness the frenzy of them releasing new material, but The Beatles were a thing of the past, and content with keeping things that way.
Following the assassination of John Lennon in 1980, the likelihood of the rest of the band coming together to work on a project under the Beatles’ name suddenly diminished from being slim to non-existent. As one of the core songwriters of the group, and arguably their de facto leader, a Beatles reunion without Lennon would have felt unjust, in poor taste, and akin to a cash grab. That, however, didn’t stop the band from releasing an entire archive of demos, alternate versions of songs, and, most remarkably, two unheard songs that had never been finished.
In 1995, the band released their Anthology 1 album, which comprised all of the above into a compendium of rarities, but the two headline-grabbing moments from this archival release were ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’. Some fans had known about the existence of these songs for some time, but hadn’t ever been privy to what they sounded like, with their status existing as something mythological. Nobody ever expected to hear finished versions of them, but when Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr clubbed together with help from Jeff Lynne to finish the two tracks, they ended up delivering a sense of closure to the band that not even diehard fans anticipated.
Finishing off these two songs wasn’t as straightforward as one might have expected though, and there was a definite desire for them to be completed in ways that felt faithful to the original ideas, and that weren’t a disappointing and unnecessary addendum on an already spectacular career. McCartney spoke in interviews around the time that he was concerned that some of the guitar parts that Harrison was coming up with during the recording sessions felt a little too similar to tracks he had released as a solo artist, and that they’d feel out of place in the context of a final Beatles song, but the final result ended up stunning the bassist.
“I felt that the song shouldn’t be pulled in any way,” McCartney argued of his determination to finish ‘Free As A Bird’. “It should sound like a Beatles song. So the suggestion was made that George might play a very simple bluesy lick rather than get too melodic. And he did: what he played was almost like a Muddy Waters riff. And that really sealed the project.”
While returning to an unfinished project over 25 years after it was originally started may have been a tricky thing to navigate, but McCartney’s insistence that Harrison rescued the final version of ‘Free As A Bird’ rings true, and succeeded at the time as being the ‘final’ Beatles track. “I thought – I still think – that George played an absolute blinder,” McCartney claimed, “because it’s difficult to play something very simple, you’re so exposed.” While they may have now deposed this duo of songs as the true final Beatles song, releasing ‘Now and Then’ in 2023, ‘Free As A Bird’ was perhaps the better way for the band to call time on the project for good, and that was thanks in part to Harrison’s inspired guitar lick.
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