NOW AND THEN

I’ve been a Beatles fan literally all my life, ever since I discovered a copy of the album INTRODUCING THE BEATLES on the VeeJay label my Grandmother dropped off at my parents’ home, along with the rest of my uncle’s record albums after he left home to go serve in the US Air Force. (In those days, mothers simply didn’t value anything their sons collected. As far as they were concerned, it was all junk. My father suffered the same fate when his mother got rid of his comic book collection, which included the earliest SUPERMAN and BATMAN issues, among other titles.)

To give further proof what an impact the band had on me, I was only 5 years old when I saw them perform for the first time on THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW. I clearly remember the family gathered around the black & white TV at my Aunt Marge’s home. My mother’s younger cousins enjoyed them as much as I did, but the older relatives were horrified at what they had just witnessed. (“They look like girls!” shrieked the older adult males.)

Long story short, I bought all the albums and kept hoping to see a reunion concert when I was old enough. That hope died on October 9, 1980, when I was watching MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL and announcer Howard Cosell announced to the world that John Lennon had been assassinated. It was all a blur after that.

Cut to the 1990’s and the Beatles announce the release of their ANTHOLOGY project. Of course I bought the CDs, the DVD set and the book. How could I not? Years later, after moving to California, I was able to see Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Ringo Starr in concert several times, each time its own unique event, especially at the concert Sir Paul put on at the SoFi Stadium in May 2022, when he did an encore performing with video of John Lennon that had been remastered by Peter Jackson for the GET BACK project. Tears were streaming down more than a few faces, including mine.

Cut to this past week and the release of what’s billed as the last Beatles song, NOW AND THEN. It was like a thunderclap. I hadn’t any idea this was a thing. The next thing I know, my son is sending me a link to a video of how this song came to be.

This wasn’t even the end product, just the story of how the song came to be, and already I found myself affected emotionally. Both the story and the song – after I saw the video a day later – struck chords of longing I had been repressing for a long time.

Currently, in addition to working on my projects and trying to have a family life, I am taking care of a friend in his last days. He’s not the first person I had to be there for at the end in a significant way, and I suspect he won’t be the last, but he’s one in a long line I had to be there for when they breathed their last breath, so I know loss. The first time I truly experienced it was when my father passed away as I sat next to his hospital bed. My mother was a mess, so I had to be the strong one over the next several days. (This whole sequence of events was what inspired the FATHER’S DAY story I wrote that was part of the overall MOBIUS: 25 YEARS LATER storyline.)

I found listening to the song NOW AND THEN a haunting, elegiac experience. This was the Beatles saying goodbye, an end point to all the joy they had given everyone for so many years. There would be no more.

But then came the comments and criticisms. The most enlightening I found was this one:

I also thought in many ways it got what the song was about. However much I enjoyed this particular analysis of the song, like many others, way too many others, it missed the actual point of the song.

This was never an attempt to compete with previous efforts. If anything, this is where the Beatles are now. We just missed out on all they could have accomplished in the intervening years, especially if John and George were still with us. Both Paul and Ringo clearly miss John and George and what they had together, and saw this as a way to end the Beatles on their own terms, not anyone else’s. The acrimony of their 1970 break-up was never the full story as we clearly saw in the GET BACK film. And if anyone had the right to take a John Lennon demo and turn it into one big heartfelt project, Paul and Ringo did. Especially Paul. He had been best friends with John and George ever since they were teenagers. They shared a life no one could ever fully grasp except the 4 Beatles themselves.

In reading the many comments of what people thought of the song, the reasons for its release, and so on, reminded me an awful lot of the comments I experienced over the years in taking my stories and characters I wrote for the SONIC THE HEDGEHOG and KNUCKLES THE ECHIDNA series as the basis for my LARA-SU CHRONICLES. How dare I continue my stories without Sonic and Knuckles when what I wrote were clearly Sonic and Knuckles stories.

My answer to these critics is that my stories weren’t just Sonic and Knuckles stories, they were stories, period. There was a whole world of characters and events in which these two characters played a part, but the other characters were just as viable on their own without Sonic and Knuckles. And just like NOW AND THEN isn’t meant to compete with the entire Beatles catalog, THE LARA-SU CHRONICLES isn’t the last word on Sonic and Knuckles stories, or contradicts what came before. This is where the story continues on to lead to its inevitable end, just like NOW AND THEN puts the period to the story of the Beatles.

As for the people who claim NOW AND THEN is nothing more than a cash grab, people everywhere are able to enjoy the song and its making all for free however many times they want. That’s as far from a cash grab as one can get. If I was in the Beatles financial stratosphere, I could do the same thing with THE LARA-SU CHRONICLES. Since I still have to work for living, I have to charge the going rate. That’s life.

The other difference between NOW AND THEN and THE LARA-SU CHRONICLES from my own personal perspective is that at least two of the Beatles were there to see the end. I have no idea at this date if I will live to see the end of my project or if others will continue on in my stead. I hope I’m around, but if not, I hope I’m able to provide as complete a road map as possible for the full project to reach its final destination.