It’s Jonathan Mosen, inviting you to share a special moment with me this coming Thursday at 9 AM Eastern, when I host a live show counting down to the Beatles final song, “Now and Then”.
You won’t have to have heard too many of my radio shows to know how important the Beatles are in my life. I know many of the Mushroom FM family share that sentiment.
Throughout the 25 years that I’ve had the privilege of being beamed into people’s homes via Internet radio, I’ve been able to share some special Beatles moments with you. A number of those have been world firsts thanks to the time zone advantage of living in New Zealand. In 2009, I remember negotiating with the owner of a CD store, who agreed to come in early so I could collect the Beatles remastered stereo and mono box sets. I paid via credit card in advance, so all I had to do was get in a cab, and call him telling him I was about to pick up the package. He was waiting outside, opened the door of the cab, and handed over the two boxes. Like some sort of Hollywood movie, I commanded the driver, “back home driver, and step on it”. I then had two computers ripping the CDS to lossless digital audio, so we could do a special five hour Mosen Explosion playing the remasters before they were available in stores in most of the world.
Since the release of the 2017 mix of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, we’ve brought you the new versions of the albums first. It has been my honour not just to play these for you, but to bring you the stories behand the songs.
While I have known about the abandoned “Now and Then” project since 1995, I have heard the original John Lennon recording and understood why the Beatles couldn’t finish the song. Never in my wildest dreams did I think technology would advance to the point where it would be possible to revisit the track, giving us one last Beatles song.
This time, I’m not bringing you anything first. The release of a new Beatles song is a global musical earthquake. It’s being carefully managed, it will happen at the same time globally at 10 AM Eastern on Thursday. That’s 7 AM Pacific time, and due to the temporary smaller time difference that week, that equates to 2 PM in the UK. We’ll bring “Now and Then” to you on Mushroom FM at the same time the whole world hears it for the first time. But since we’ve all shared so many Beatles moments together, I hope you’ll choose to share this one with me too.
Our countdown starts at 9 AM Eastern, an hour before the song is released. We’ll hear from Sir Paul, Sir Ringo, Giles Martin, Sir Peter jackson, and Sean Lennon explaining how they were able to finish the song. Of course we’ll be playing nothing but Beatles music.
If you’d like to make a Beatles request, share any Beatles stories and discuss what they mean to you, please do be in touch, you’d be very welcome.
This is the first of two special shows. The following week, remixes of many new Beatles songs are arriving, and I’ll have more to say about that closer to the time.
In the meantime, put something in your calendar, set an alarm, Braille it on your hand, do whatever it takes, because we’ll all remember where we were when the final Beatles song came out. It would be my absolute honour if you’d share such a special moment with me.
See you at 9 AM Eastern this Thursday, for our countdown to “Now and Then”, on Mushroom FM.