The Beatles made music that transcended their generation, touching lives for decades to come. There’s more than a hint of the uncanny in their work at times – layers of hidden meaning that seem to touch on unmasked areas of the subconscious.
Still, when the band reconvened in the mid 90s they could scarcely have imagined how deeply it would affect them. Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were gifted a cassette by Yoko Ono, featuring home made demos recorded by the late John Lennon.
Deciding to record two of these for the Anthology project, the trio worked alongside producer Jeff Lynne on ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’.
Right from the start, the reconvened group knew how difficult it would be to measure up their illustrious past – especially without John Lennon in tow. Paul McCartney explained…
“She was there with Sean … and she played us a couple of tracks. There were two newies on mono cassettes which he did at home … [s]o I checked it out with Sean, because I didn’t want him to have a problem with it. He said, “Well, it’ll be weird hearing a dead guy on lead vocal. But give it a try.” I said to them both, “If it doesn’t work out, you can veto it.” When I told George and Ringo I’d agreed to that they were going, “What? What if we love it?” It didn’t come to that, luckily. I said to Yoko, “Don’t impose too many conditions on us, it’s really difficult to do this, spiritually. We don’t know, we may hate each other after two hours in the studio and just walk out. So don’t put any conditions, it’s tough enough.”
With the single set for release, the three musicians took part in a photo shoot – keenly aware of the loss of John Lennon, and the memories the session had evoked.
Suddenly, a white peacock came into view, and all three felt the presence of John Lennon. McCartney said, “I said to the other guys, ‘That’s John!’ Spooky, eh? It was like John was hanging around. We felt that all the way through the recording.”
But there is a little more to the story. John once told his son Julian that if anything should ever happen to him, he would send a white feather and that would be the signal he was watching over him and things would be OK. Julian did eventually have a white feather handed to him by an aborigine in Australia while discussing issues important to the native population there. The nonprofit he started is called the White Feather Foundation.
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