Ringo on Grow Old With Me: "In a way, it’s the four of us"
“It’s not a publicity stunt. This is just what I wanted”, Ringo Starr explains why he choose to cover the relatively unknown song Grow Old With Me by former bandmate John Lennon. The inspiration to record the track came when the Beatles drummer ran into noted producer Jack Douglas who had worked with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the Double Fantasy album (1980).
Jack asked if I ever heard The Bermuda Tapes, John’s demos from that time. And I had never heard all this. (…) I just loved this song. I sang it the best that I could. I do well up when I think of John this deeply. And I’ve done my best. We’ve done our best. The other good thing is that I really wanted Paul to play on it, and he said yes. 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."
Ringo Starr
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It's not the first time the two surviving members of the Beatles are working together. From time to time Ringo has guest appearances at McCartney’s live shows and through the years both collaborated on each other’s albums, including Starr’s last one, Give More Love (2017). But this is the first time since The Beatles’ Free As A Bird in 1995 that they record a song by John Lennon. So you could call the release of Grow Old With Me some kind of a reunion; and to complete this ‘Fab Four reunion’ there is also a bit by George Harrison, a tiny one:
The strings that Jack arranged for this track, if you really listen, they do one line from “Here Comes The Sun.” So in a way, it’s the four of us.”
Ringo Starr
Video: Ringo Starr - Grow Old With Me
John Lennon was inspired by two different sources when he wrote the song: A song by Yoko One called Let Me Count The Ways, which in turn had been inspired from a poem by 19th century English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She and her husband Robert Browning wrote several poems that together forms a pair. Yoko suggested to John that he’d write a song inspired by a Robert Browning poem to accompany her song, to make a pair as well. Lennon liked this idea and Browning’s poem Rabbi Ben Ezra became the second inspiration for Grow Old On Me.
The two new songs, "Grow Old with Me" and "Let Me Count the Ways" were originally meant for the Double Fantasy album. But because of a tight working schedule, the new album had to be released before Christmas, Lennon and Ono decided to postpone the recording of the song. A few different home recordings of it were made by Lennon and Ono and one of these versions was released on Milk And Honey in 1984.
The song was one of four demo recordings of John Lennon’s unfinished songs, including Free As A Bird, Real Love and Now And Then, given by Yoko Ono to the three remaining Beatles. They never attempted to work on Grow Old with Me in a similar way that they had with the other Beatles reunion songs. Free As A Bird and Real Love were the only ones completed.
The song has been covered several times, among others by country singer Glen Campbell in 2008.
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