https://youtu.be/ODIvONHPqpk

The year is 1995 and a project to resurrect some of the Beatles historic archival film and memorabilia emerges. Before his death living in the Dakota Apartments in New York, John Lennon records some songs in 1977 that may have begun before the Beatles officially disbanded in 1971, but John never developed them at that point. The song “Free as a Bird” materializes and the three remaining Beatles finish out the tune with their backing vocals and instruments. In a sense, it is a Beatles reunion. MTV releases the accompanying video which is made uniquely as a camera pans back and forth across the past showing images of the “Fab Four” walking among Liver Pool citizens in black and white footage as people walk to work, children play, and some eerie references to Paul’s death also become apparent.

There are some computer generated film bytes of the Beatles walking among the people in the streets and performing at the “Cavern” a young people’s underground nightclub where the four musicians began their band and performed regularly. Well through the 4 minute 59 second song we see the Astin Martin sports car that Paul was supposedly killed in smashed into the rear of another vehicle, smoking beneath the hood, a small crowd of people looking on, and cordoned off by a perimeter of British police, the license plate is clearly visible. Toward the very end of the music video the camera pans across a graveyard clearly showing the tombstone of Eleanor Rigby then continues to scan across the eerie cemetery and we see none other than Paul McCartney skipping across the top of  a hedgerow on the edge of the property. Was this simply added irony to the archival film footage? Or, was this an added reminder that accompanies the prior evidence left from previous Beatle LP’s? More bread crumbs leading us through the secretive past?

George Harrison records a memorable slide guitar performance that drones mournfully through the sad but impressive chain of footage that reminds us of better days and the Beatles themselves asking how did such grand memories fade away in the course of their legendary musical careers. “Free as a Bird” seems a closing chapter to the legacy of the Beatles, haunting, beautiful, and yet gloomy with the lingering reminders of Paul’s untimely demise hidden in lyrics and visual cues in album cover photos of years past.

Free as a Bird

Free as a bird
It's the next best thing to be
Free as a bird
Home, home and dry
Like a homing bird I'll fly
As a bird on wings

Whatever happened to
The life that we once knew?
Can we really live without each other?
Where did we lose the touch
That seemed to mean so much?
It always made me feel so

Free as a bird
Like the next best thing to be
Free as a bird
Home, (home) home and dry
Like a homing bird I'll fly
As a bird on wings

Whatever happened to
The life that we once knew?
Always made me feel so free

Free as a bird
Is the next best thing to be
Free as a bird
Free as a bird
Free as a bird
Oo-oo-oo

Made for John Lennon