LONDON – Just hours after announcing a “new” Beatles song enabled by artificial intelligence, the surviving members of the seminal rock group, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, aided by “Get Back” director Peter Jackson, finally succeeded in isolating John Lennon’s admitted physical abuse of women from the rest of his legacy.
“We’ve wanted to do this since the 1980s when John literally fessed up to having hit women in a ‘Playboy’ interview. Unfortunately the technology to pluck that out of his reputation wasn’t there at the time,” says McCartney, age 81. “By the time we were working on ‘Anthology’ a decade later, Jeff Lyne made a fair crack at it but failed. Best he could do was patch over the bit about John beating a guy at the Cavern Club for implying he’d been a bit gay with Brian Epstein. George [Harrison] ultimately voted to leave it all in, so we left it all in.”
Peter Jackson is optimistic about the future of the “pinpoint reputation management technology” developed by his production company.
“I’m so pleased to be trusted again with securing the legacy of the Fab Four. The artificial intelligence software we began to design for ‘Get Back’ have developed into groundbreaking tools for removing pesky and utterly boring contextual nuance from modern considerations of monomythic musical legacies like John Lennon’s,” said Jackson. “Who wants a hero you have to think about too much? I’m sure this will prove extremely useful for powerful men in the entertainment industry across the board. I’m working on selling the rights to several pop-punk producers as we speak.”
Lennon’s former bandmate Ringo Star seemed unaware of the broader implications of the development.
“Peter said he’s helped John out, which is nice of him. It’s amazing what the computers can do these days. I have one. It’s a watch computer. Wear it on me arm. Tells time as well. I had all the numbers replaced with ‘PEACE.’ So right now, it’s peace o’clock. Half past peace. Lovely,” said Starr while staring completely infatuatedly at his Apple Watch. “The password to it is ‘4444’ so I don’t forget it. I use the same password for everything, really. Maybe I shouldn’t say that.”
As of press time, Jackson was extending offers to the David Bowie and Michael Jackson estates.