The Beatles Tease Announcement: ‘There Will be an Answer’

There’s movement in the Beatles camp.

Less than six months after the Fab Four dropped what was billed as their last song, “Now And Then,” the legendary British band’s website and social accounts tease another release.

The post simply reads “There will be an answer,” a lyric from the 1970 song “Let It Be,” accompanied with four blank frames, positioned to resemble the artwork for the Let It Be album. And the cryptic clue, “At last…”

Below it, the Disney + and Apple Corps logos.

Internet sleuths are predicting both parties will release Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 80-minute film from 1970, Let It Be, on Disney’s streaming platform.

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson used Lindsay-Hogg rushes for his marathon, three-part documentary series The Beatles: Get Back, which captured the final stages of the Beatles’ creative period, and streamed in late 2021 on Disney +.

Let It Be premiered in cinemas back in 1970, and was released on home video formats in the early 1980s, but was never officially issued on DVD, blu-ray or licensed for streaming.

Jackson and his team helped complete “Now And Then,” then backed up to direct its wistful official music video.

“Now And Then” began life as a demo written and sung by John Lennon, was later developed and worked on by Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, and was finished by Paul and Ringo, the surviving members of The Beatles, more than 40 years after the group began work on it.

The late Lennon’s vocals were recorded to tape in the 1970s, and remained there until Jackson found a solution. The New Zealander and his team developed a technology for the three-part documentary series, which enabled Lennon’s vocals to be uncoupled from his piano part.

The single blasted to No. 1 on the Official U.K. Singles Chart, setting records in the process, and notching the Beatles’ 18th leader in their homeland.

Billboard has reached out to Apple Corps for comment on the forthcoming Beatles announcement.

Lars Brandle

Billboard