‘Grow Old With Me’: The John Lennon song that made Ringo Starr cry
The break up The Beatles tended to feel like the entire rock revolution coming to an end. After getting to know the Fab Four like old friends throughout the 1960s, seeing them falling out over business decisions and creative differences led to a musical mourning spread throughout the rock scene. While all four members would never reunite together again, John Lennon would find himself helping out his old bandmates now and then.
When working on his first solo albums, Lennon was more inclined to save material for himself, penning songs about undergoing primal scream therapy on Plastic Ono Band. Even though The Beatles had fallen apart on paper, Lennon was still willing to use Ringo Starr on his records, with the drummer providing the perfect pulse to tracks like ‘God’ and ‘Mother’.
As Starr moved on to his solo career, he would find himself getting by with a little help from his friends. Throughout his career highs like 1973’s Ringo, Starr would get songs that were donated by his fellow Beatles, with George Harrison helping him write the track ‘Photograph’ and Lennon donating the song ‘I’m The Greatest’ for the album.
Even though Lennon wasn’t giving away any of his A-material, he still worked alongside Starr for a few more years, giving him lighthearted songs like ‘Cooking in the Kitchen of Love’. While Starr may have benefited from having a Beatles touch on his albums, Lennon’s donations would stop once he decided to walk away from the music industry.
After Lennon finally won his fight to remain in America, the birth of his son Sean made him reevaluate his priorities. Not having to deliver an album for the first time, Lennon took time out to raise his child, hardly even picking up his guitar for five years while he cared for Sean. Once he had a troubling experience at sea, though, Lennon thought that it was time for him to get back into music during the 1980s.
Creating a song dialogue between him and his wife, Yoko Ono, Double Fantasy would become one of Lennon’s late-career triumphs, reminding Beatles fans of the youthful energy that he brought to his music on tracks like ‘Watching the Wheels’ and ‘Clean Up Time’. While Lennon would be murdered only a few weeks after the album’s release, that wasn’t the last we would hear from him.
Working on the follow-up around the same time, Lennon’s demos of new songs would be folded into his posthumous album Milk and Honey. Although every track suits Lennon’s voice perfectly, he initially wanted the song ‘Grow Old With Me’ reserved for one of Ringo’s albums. Sounding like a soft ballad, the track was meant to be in the vein of wedding standards, with Lennon crooning throughout the piece.
While Starr admitted that he couldn’t go through with recording it, he admitted shedding a few tears when hearing the demo, saying, “At the very beginning of this CD (of demos), John says, ‘Oh, that sounds like a good song for Richard Starkey. This would be great for you, Ringo.’ I still well up thinking about [it].”
With years of hindsight, though, Starr did eventually dust the track off for 2019’s What’s My Name, finally getting the chance to hear the song as Lennon may have intended it to sound.
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