Have you heard the latest Beatles’ song yet?

“Have you heard the latest Beatles song yet?” Of course we had. We’d heard it all week on Radio Luxemburg. Or Radio Caroline. But we still crammed into to one of the listening booths in Whitwams Music Shop in Winchester and listened to it over and over again all morning.

The thing is, I was never a Beatles fan. I never bought into the mop top, cheeky image. I was much more into the Stones and the Kinks. I had their pictures on my pencil case. Their raw, bluesy shouty anarchy appealed much more to the adolescent boy than the Beatles.

And yet… And yet. We got that there was something else about the Beatles. Their was something almost mystical happening in the Abbey Road Studios. These were four guys who had played in rough and tumble clubs. Who knew old music hall songs and skiffle and dance music and were somehow welding it together into something weird and wonderful. You could sing along to Beatles songs the first time you heard them. It was not the transatlantic art-school chic of the Stones. I had all the Stones lps back to before “High Tide and Green Grass” and “Out of Our Heads.” I’ve seeen the Rolling Stones several times. They were, indeed, one of the most dynamic stage acts I’ve ever seen. I only saw the Beatles once. Briefly. On top of an Office Block in one of the posher parts of London.

“Rubber Soul” crept into our consciousness at parties. Odd, touching. Then “Revolver” and we knew there was something outside normal musical experience.

I think it’s not coinceidence that George Martin produced spoken word comedy and novelty records with the like of Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Bernard Cribbins. He understood how to twist things around and how to work with the oddballs and this came across in Beatles music even if only where he said “Yes” to weird ideas where othe producers woould have said “No”. And he was prepared to fight for oddness with record companies. Beatles music in the sixties was surprising, well-crafted and instantly recognisable.

So when somebody said to me “Have you heard the latest Beatles song yet?” I was prepared to disregard it as a bit self-indulgent toss; a money-making scheme for exploitative record companies to cash in before the last two died. Probaly a last gasp of Lennon that in his life-time might have made it onto the B side of Imagine.

And yet… and yet… There it was. Undoubtedly a Beatles song. Surprising, well-crafted, technically brilliant and instantly recognisable. Pieced together in the way that they used to work together in the studio. Unbelievably sentimental, the words echoing with meaning that Lennon could never have Imagined all those years ago.

It’s described as the last Beatles song and I hope it is. It’s said what it has had to say and it doesn’t need anything else beyond.