‘Grow Old With Me’: The tragic story of John Lennon’s denouement
Most artists can only hope to have a say in how their final bows are going to go in the industry. Anyone can try their best to make their last songs with their head held high, but while John Lennon never had that many strikeouts in his crazy lifetime, it’s incredibly sad to think that he had so much lined up for him by the time he passed away.
Because, really, Lennon should have been starting a completely new chapter at the time of his death. Despite his tragic assassination, he was booming on a professional level after his wayward trip to Bermuda, which helped melt away a lot of the creative block that he had imposed on himself since the birth of his son Sean. There was a lot to be happy about at this point in his life, and Double Fantasy was his first step towards acknowledging his age a little bit more.
In fact, a lot of what Lennon was doing on his comeback solo album wouldn’t have been that out of place with what his writing partner was doing years earlier. Paul McCartney had been singing about domestic bliss and staying inside with the one he loved as far back as McCartney and RAM, and while we’ll never know what they would have done if they were on the same creative page in, say, 1982, Lennon’s ‘Grow Old With Me’ was the real tearjerker from that time.
And that’s not a sentence anyone should take lightly. ‘Beautiful Boy’ is enough to leave anyone in tears, and ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’ is heartbreaking knowing what would happen within weeks of the album coming out, but even in its primal demo form, Lennon seemed to be on the verge of another one of his classic ballads.
While a lot of woodshedding was done during this time that resulted in songs for the Beatles Anthology like ‘Free as a Bird’ and ‘Real Love’, ‘Grow Old With Me’ was the first time it sounded like the bespectacled icon had found peace. Here was a man who had been dealing with some of the worst emotional trauma anyone had to endure at home, and after finally trying to repent for his own sins throughout the 1970s, this was him finally being content with his hardships and looking forward to moving on.
But it’s all wishful thinking at the end of the day. As much as this song is absolutely stunning, he’s singing about a version of his ideal life that would never come to pass, and even when the song was offered to Ringo Starr shortly after his bandmate’s passing, he knew that he couldn’t go through with it, eventually waiting years before making his own version of the track.
Even when putting the tune together for What’s My Name, Starr wanted to make sure that it was an authentic reunion of the band, saying, “Paul came over and he played bass and sings a little bit on this with me. So John’s on it in a way. I’m on it and Paul’s on it. […] And the strings […], if you really listen, they do one line from ‘Here Comes the Sun.’ So in a way, it’s the four of us.”
While there had been speculation about the group working on the song during the Anthology project, this is one of the few demos that shouldn’t have been tampered with. This is a Lennon song from back to front, and while it’s sad to think about it in the context of the time it was made, it’s important for it to stand as a document of Lennon’s state of mind going into the 1980s. He wouldn’t be around for long, but even if Starr helped redefine Lennon’s tune, it will always be remembered as ‘The Intellectual Beatle’ looking towards a hopeful future.
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