Give this Lennon piece one more chance
(April 2, 2021)

               It is well known that John Lennon had a lot of trouble getting songs “right,” just the way he wanted them. “Strawberry Fields Forever” is the most obvious case in point, as it wound up in multiple early versions---with two different tempo/key takes famously edited together at his suggestion (by engineer Geoff Emerick) for the finished release.
          When you factor in Lennon’s well-known post-Beatles comment to producer George Martin that he would redo all his Beatles songs, especially “Strawberry Fields,” you get an idea of how complex and quicksilver were his musical notions.
          One can only wonder what he might think of the amazing and somewhat tortured saga of one of his last songs, “Grow Old With Me,” which he originally intended to be done with strings (and, presumably, his piano accompaniment.) Consider:
         *Cassettes containing various demo versions of the song were stolen from the Dakota after Lennon’s murder.
         *A tinny-sounding, lone remaining piano demo, recorded in Lennon’s bedroom in November, 1980 with a rhythm box accompaniment, was released on the posthumous “Milk and Honey” album in 1983.
          *The so-called Threetles rejected the same 11/80 take as a reunion Beatles song in 1994-95, reportedly because it was either too technically difficult to work with, or that Harrison deemed it “too sad,” given the fact that Lennon was not around to “grow old.” Or both.
          *Ono, in a wonderful gesture, asked Beatles producer George Martin in 1998 to write an orchestral score for the 11/80 demo, and this version appeared on the John Lennon Anthology and compilation album, Working Class Hero.
          *The various stolen demo versions---some with piano and some with guitar backing (listen here: https://youtu.be/Uvxl9CFNzE4) ---showed up on bootlegs, and on Youtube in 2009, often in far superior sound quality to the officially released demo.
          *An altered version of the Martin orchestral take was released this year---40 years after the recording of the demo that forms the basis of the track---on John Lennon: Gimme Some Truth, the Ultimate Mixes, produced by Simon Hilton, Paul Hicks, Sam Gannon, with Sean Ono Lennon supervising.
          *Ringo Starr released a version of the song, with Paul McCartney on bass and backing vocal, in 2019, allegedly because Lennon had suggested it for him on tape.  Jack Douglas, who produced Lennon’s last sessions, did a string arrangement---as per Lennon’s expressed wish---with Daniel Cole.
          *Two renditions produced recently by anonymous fans for Youtube are, in this writer’s opinion, better than all officially released Lennon versions. (More later.)
 

Obviously disappointed that the “Threetles” had passed on the song, Ono enlisted Martin to give it the kind of beautiful arrangement Lennon might have envisioned, to “give the song a home,” as she told me.

            The song, of course, began as Lennon’s answer to Ono’s “Let Me Count The Ways,” inspired by the Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet of the same name. Ono phoned Lennon, who was on his legendary sailing holiday in Bermuda, to sing it for him, then suggested that he “answer” her song, using a line from poem by Browning’s poet husband, Robert.
           “John called me that afternoon,” Ono wrote in the liner notes for Milk and Honey, where both songs appeared. “'Hey, you won't believe this!' He explained that he was watching the TV, a '50s film of a baseball player. In the film, John saw the girlfriend send a poem to her baseball player, a poem which was one by Robert Browning called ‘Grow Old Beside Me.' . . .John proudly played his song over the phone.”
            In fact, the poem was Robert Browning’s “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” whose first lines became the first lines of Lennon’s song: “Grow old along with me / The best is yet to be. . .” The result was one of his gentlest anthems, in the general vein of “Good Night,” “Because,” or “Beautiful Boy.” (The movie, by the way, was recently established by Beatles author Kenneth Womack as having been the 1978 made-for-TV movie, “A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story” — about the New York Yankees legend who died at the age of 37 from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.)
 

            Ono confirmed to me in a 1998 interview that Lennon had intended the song to be recorded with strings. Originally intended for Double Fantasy, a formal studio recording of “Grow Old. . .” was postponed in order that the comeback album be finished for Christmas. Thus the 11/80 Dakota bedroom demo became the definitive version, released posthumously as the penultimate track on Milk and Honey, which otherwise consisted of unfinished studio takes of songs leftover from the Double Fantasy sessions.
            Obviously disappointed that the “Threetles” had passed on the song, Ono enlisted Martin to give it the kind of beautiful arrangement Lennon might have envisioned, to “give the song a home,” as she put it. Martin scored an elegant, tender accompaniment with strings, flute, and electric bass (sounding very much like Paul McCartney, but reportedly played by Martin’s son, Giles.) Sad to say, little could be done to enhance the sound quality of the mono cassette demo, let alone to remove the obtrusive smack of the rhythm box.
            And so it seemed the song was finally “finished,” or at least as finished as it could be, with the Martin version. Then came those demos of better sound quality---the cassettes taken from the Dakota many years earlier---surfacing on Youtube in 2009.  Lennon’s singing was much more prominent and clear than on the 11/80 piano demo (and there was no rhythm box!), which begged the question: why didn’t the Lennon Estate “fix” the existing “Grow Old With Me” by substituting one of these superior demos (or combining the best of them), integrating with Martin’s arrangement?
 

“The songs all began with an explanation, a lot of it funny, and all of them ended with, ‘What a piece of crap. I’m going to give it to Ringo for his solo album.’”

           That question became all the more pertinent with the Oct. 9, 2020 release of John Lennon: Gimme Some Truth, the Ultimate Mixes boxed set. “Grow Old With Me” was among the remixes, in its third officially released incarnation (fourth if you count Ringo’s.) It appears that the production team of Ono Lennon and company opted to start the song with a different demo of Lennon at piano, and then, at the 54-second mark, weave the Martin arrangement into the proceedings---utilizing, again, the original 11/80 demo. Much effort was apparently expended to mute the rhythm box beat, but it is still annoyingly apparent.
            So where the Ultimate Mix version tried but failed to create a definitive version, Ringo arguably accomplished exactly that, with Jack Douglas, a year earlier. This remarkable recording brought the key down to Starr’s range, and showcased the then-79-year-old drummer’s still strong singing voice, and very touching, heartfelt interpretation. Add the fact that Paul is on the track, and that the string part---reminiscent of Martin’s own arrangement for the song---quotes a phrase from Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun,” and, in a way, it becomes a Beatles song.
           “I was really emotional when Jack Douglas, the producer who produced John, mentioned it to me,” Ringo told Rob LeDonne in a GQ Magazine interview.  “At the beginning of the demo, you can hear John say, ‘Oh, this would be good for Richard Starkey… this would be great for you, Ring!’”
            It seems unlikely that Lennon would have suggested “Grow Old With Me” for Starr, as it was meant specifically to be an answer to Ono’s “Let Me Count the Ways.” Yet in interviews with Douglas, it becomes clear that Lennon, who was not confident in the quality of his work during the “house husband” period in the Dakota (or arguably ever), used “Give it to Ringo” and variations of that sentence as a catch-all dismissal. Douglas told Ben Yakas in a 2016 interview with Gothamist.com how Ono sent an envelope full of Lennon demos (made on Lennon’s fabled sailing trip in Bermuda) to him, to see if Douglas was interested in producing. Lennon phoned the next day to ask what he thought.
           “And my honest opinion was that they were very primitive, a whole bunch of cassettes, there was narration in it, he talked me through it,” said Douglas. “The songs all began with an explanation, a lot of it funny, and all of them ended with, ‘What a piece of crap. I’m going to give it to Ringo for his solo album.’”
           (In a heartbreaking revelation, Douglas added that Lennon planned to “do a Ringo album---Paul had already signed on. So it was going to be Paul and John and we were trying to get George to back Ringo, which would have been unbelievable.”)
 

First is a version that came and went quickly from Youtube: a completely different demo, in far superior sound quality, utilizing George Martin’s arrangement. A simple solution in keeping with Yoko Ono’s vision, but with a much better performance than the 11/80 demo. This really should have been done by the Lennon Estate.

            Lennon is infamous for making blunt remarks that were not intended to offend, and certainly the “piece of crap” comment was offhanded. (“I’m the Greatest,” which he wrote for Starr, was first-tier Lennon.) But it does seem to confirm that Lennon recommended “Grow Old With Me”---no “piece of crap”---to Ringo on one of the demo tapes. (Of many songs done toward the end of his life as cassette demos, Lennon had also earmarked a country-western ditty called “Life Begins at 40” for Starr to record on what became his Stop and Smell The Roses album. The drummer reportedly rejected the idea after Lennon’s death, for obvious reasons.)
            Despite Starr splendidly recording the song (and enlisting Paul to play on it), and despite the attempt to improve it on Lennon: Gimme Some Truth, and despite: George Martin’s fine arrangement, Douglas/Cole’s fine arrangement, Joe Walsh’s gentle guitar solo on the Ringo version, and all good intentions by all concerned, “Grow Old With Me” still feels like a song in search of a finished production.
            Given the superior sound-quality demos that have surfaced in recent years, the opportunity is there.
            Two fan versions on Youtube come closest, in this writer’s opinion, to suggesting what a definitive production could be, should Ono Lennon and his team wish to, at some point, try again. First is a version that came and went quickly from Youtube: a completely different demo, in far superior sound quality, utilizing George Martin’s arrangement. No rhythm box, clear vocal, clear piano. A simple solution in keeping with Yoko Ono’s vision, but with a much better performance than the 11/80 demo. This really should have been done by the Lennon Estate.
             Second is a very clever production, intelligently assembled. This also uses a different Lennon demo with greater presence, and---get this---combines Martin’s arrangement with the Douglas/Cole back-up---plus Ringo’s drumming, Walsh’s guitar, McCartney’s bass. Fans often take silly liberties with “homemade Beatles songs,” but in this case, whoever made this version has tastefully added the “love love love” chorus from The Beatles’ “All You Need is Love” and the “tit tit tit” passage from The Beatles’ “Girl.” Give a listen here:  https://youtu.be/YexPTayXhLM
            If I were Ono Lennon, I would use this version as a kind of guide, or at least for inspiration, for a new production, perhaps as a “special edition” for a future release. Perhaps he and his brother, Julian, could record back-up vocals instead of using vocal parts from old Beatles songs.  Perhaps even convene Ringo and Paul.
            Why suggest such a thing? Isn’t enough enough? Well, it turns out that “Grow Old With Me,” a song that poor John never realized beyond demo form, has become one of his most loved works. It has been covered by Patti Smith (in a moving concert rendition here: https://youtu.be/z-ZQwf00uHg ) Glen Campbell, Mary Chapin Carpenter, classical guitarist Christopher Rude, and various others, and turns up at a hell of a lot of weddings. 
            So why not give our dear friend John one last shot at getting this one. . .right?

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