Ringo Starr has admitted he really wants to win a Grammy for Beatles track Now And Then - and confirmed George Harrison was not keen on the track being released originally because it wasn't up to their usual standards. The song is based on a 1970s demo recording by John Lennon, and was completed in 2022 by Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Ringo Starr, and has been nominated in the Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance Grammy categories.
The band also attempted to record Now And Then during their Anthology project in the Nineties but the session was quickly abandoned - with guitarist George Harrison saying the quality of Lennon's recording was "rubbish". Ringo, 84, told Music Week: “I’d love to win a Grammy. That’s the business I’m in – and the track is good. The last track ever by the boys. We tried it in the ’90s when we got Free As A Bird [and Real Love as part of The Beatles Anthology collection] out, but we didn’t take much interest because it didn’t sound like John, and George got a bit fed up. He didn’t want to do a third one and so we just put it to bed, but now they’ve got better equipment. They lifted John’s voice off a cassette, for God’s sake – off a cassette! And it was like John was suddenly in town.”.
Remembering how it came about, he added: “He(Paul) said, ‘You know that track we did? Well, I’ll put it together. Are you going to play drums on it?’ I said, ‘Sure, send the files over.’ That’s how we do it now – and I put the drums on and sang on the chorus.
