In the early hours of 3 November 2023, fans queued at HMV in Liverpool to buy vinyl copies of the Beatles' new single “Now and Then.” The first person in line happened to be legally named John Lennon; he told the Guardian that he had begun waiting at 8 a.m. on Thursday so he could be first to buy the seven-inch and twelve-inch editions when they went on sale at midnight. His wait crossed from one day into the next.
The song began as a home demo recorded by John Lennon roughly two years before his death in 1980. Yoko Ono gave the tape to the surviving Beatles in 1994, but technical problems stopped them from completing it. Audio-separation technology later allowed Lennon's vocal to be isolated, and Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr finished the recording.
A young fan in the queue said he wanted to tell his future children and grandchildren that he had bought a Beatles record on release day. A track available instantly through digital services was worth more than half a day of waiting when the goal was to receive it first as a physical object. The “last Beatles song” was completed with modern technology and handed over through the old-fashioned order of a shop queue.