Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Future Beatles

The other day, I heard The Beatles' "Real Love" playing on the radio, one of two new songs the three surviving Beatles released in 1996; John's part was reconstructed from an old demo. It occured to me that Paul and Ringo could, presumably, pull the same trick again, pulling in demos from both John and George; and so, too, could the last survivor repeat the trick with his three fallen mates. 

But even after the last Beatle leaves this earthly plane, it seems to me that technology will, if it hasn't already, progressed enough to sample what must be hundreds of hours of Beatle vocals and instrumentals to produce entirely new songs, and perhaps even completely new albums. Could you even really call such a project a true Beatles production? Certainly not, if you're a purist, but imagine if some pure-hearted genius brought the band back to life this way? We've already seen digital reconstructions of dead actors in film; why not dead bands?

Well, the answer to that question, of course, is because the world moves on and we should embrace new artists instead of wallowing in the past. Even the greatest artists have a natural lifespan, do they not? 

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