The most exciting thing was, even though John was no longer on this planet, here he was in the studio with us: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Jeff Lynne on how The Beatles made Free As A Bird [Video]

The way that the three remaining Beatles got a handle on the strange vibe of being in a studio together again without John Lennon in 1994 was to pretend he was actually part of the session and had just nipped out. “We just pretended that he’d gone home on holiday,” Paul McCartney said in a press conference at the time, “as if he said, ‘Just finish it up, I trust you’.”

This was how McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – dubbed The Threetles – approached the making of Free As A Bird, which came out in early December, 1995. They weren’t strictly a trio making their first music as The Beatles since Lennon’s death, though. Working on a creaking old demo recorded onto a cassette by John Lennon – one of four that the remaining members were given by Yoko One – the band realised that they needed to bring in an outside influence to help them get the …