Director Peter Jackson Shares Details of Upcoming Beatles 'Now and Then' Video - Includes Clip of Early Beatles Provided by Pete Best

Directed by Peter Jackson, the video for the Beatles' "Now and Then" debuts on YouTube and elsewhere on Nov. 3, the same day the song goes public. A mini-documentary about the making of the tune is set for release on Nov. 2 (see the trailer below)

Details from Jackson via Hits Daily Double:

Jackson, who directed Get Back, the docuseries on the making of Let It Be, said he was reluctant to accept the offer to make the video, saying he needed time to figure out a reason to reject the offer. The Apple/Capitol/UMe publicity machine got Jackson to go deep on the making of the video.

“I told Apple [Corps] how the lack of suitable footage worried me,” Jackson says. “We’d need to use a lot of rare and unseen film, but there’s very little. Nothing at all seemed to exist showing Paul, George and Ringo working on ‘Now And Then’ in 1995. There’s not much footage of John in the mid-‘70s when he wrote the demo. I grizzled about the lack of unseen Beatles footage from the ’60s. And they didn’t even shoot any footage showing Paul and Ringo working on the song last year.”

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr did not wait for Jackson to say no. They shot footage of themselves performing the new song and Apple Corps unearthed more than 14 hours of long forgotten film shot during the 1995 recording sessions, including several hours of McCartney, George Harrison and Starr working on “Now And Then.” Sean Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison sent over some unseen home movie footage.

“To cap things off,” Jackson notes, “a few precious seconds of The Beatles performing in their leather suits, the earliest known film of The Beatles and never seen before, was kindly supplied by Pete Best.

“Watching this footage completely changed the situation—I could see how a music video could be made. Actually, I found it far easier if I thought of it as making a short movie, so that’s what I did. My lack of confidence with music videos didn’t matter anymore if I wasn’t making one.

“Even so, I still had no solid vision for what this short film should be—so I turned to the song for guidance.”

He listened to an early mix Giles Martin had sent him. “As I kept listening," the filmmaker recalled, "it felt like the song was creating ideas and images that started forming in my head—without any conscious effort from me.”

...Jackson had one idea that he presented to Dhani Harrison who happened to be visiting New Zealand. The idea brought tears to the eyes of George’s son so Jackson went with it.

They found a collection of unseen outtakes in the vault, where The Beatles were relaxed, funny and rather candid.

“These become the spine of our middle section, and we wove the humor into some footage shot in 2023,” Jackson says. “The result is pretty nutty and provided the video with much needed balance between the sad and the funny.

“To be honest, while we hope we’ve given The Beatles a suitable final farewell, that’s something you’ll need to decide for yourselves when it’s finally released—only a few days from now.”