Watch New Mini Documentary About The Beatles’ 1990s Reunion Song “Free as a Bird,” Featuring Unseen Studio Footage of the Surviving Bandmates

A short documentary titled A Song Reborn, about the making of The Beatles’ 1994 reunion tune “Free as a Bird,” has debuted on the band’s official YouTube channel. The five-minute film features previously unseen studio footage of Beatles members Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr working on the track, as well as their commentary about the recording.

The footage was shot during the making of the 1990s docuseries The Beatles Anthology, a restored and expanded version of which recently premiered on Disney+.

“Free as a Bird” was built around a home demo of an unfinished song John Lennon recorded in 1977. Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, gave the cassette with the recording to John’s fellow Beatles, who then completed the track.

Early in the video, we hear Harrison discussing what led to the decision to record a new track using the Lennon demo.

“Different ideas have been talked about, that we can do the background music or even write a new song,” he noted. “We always had a thing between the four of us that if any one of us wasn’t in it, we weren’t gonna go out as The Beatles.”

McCartney then explained, “We had this cassette, ‘Free as a Bird.’ It was very bad quality. It was just a mono cassette, with John and the piano locked in on one track, which nobody would normally deal with. … But the song was so strong, now, [it was] like, ‘Wow,’ you know, ‘this is impossible. John’s dead, but we’re actually gonna be able to play with him again.’”

Source: Matt Friedlander/americansongwriter.com

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