Beatlefan followed up in its next issue, stating, “They worked on all the Lennon songs, the source said, but apparently settled on ‘Free As a Bird’ for inclusion in the upcoming Apple video series, The Beatles Anthology.”[2] Beatlefan was also the first to report that the second single would be ‘Real Love.’[3] 

‘Grow Old With Me’ the third Beatles single?

Over the course of the next 20 months, there were numerous mentions of ‘Grow Old With Me’ in the press as one of the possible ‘reunion’ songs on the upcoming Anthology albums. ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ were subsequently released on Anthology 1 (November, 1995) and 2 (March, 1996), respectively.

On September 2, 1995, Billboard magazine reported that Lou Mann, senior vice president of sales at Capitol Records, said the third Anthology album would contain “yet another new song, which, according to Mann, has yet to be recorded.”[4]

Just over one week later, Beatlefan/EXTRA! broke the news that ‘Grow Old With Me’ would be the third song. As before, the magazine cited “a source close to Yoko Ono.”[5] This was subsequently picked up by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere.  

Previous Beatlefan reports about the reunion songs had largely proven correct. However, this report fell apart shortly thereafter. 

The Allan Kozinn Interview

On October 3rd, 1995, Allan Kozinn of the New York Times interviewed Paul McCartney. Kozinn’s interview was subsequently published in the November-December issue of Beatlefan.

McCartney confirmed that ‘Grow Old With Me’ was one of the songs considered. “She played us three songs: ‘Grow Old With Me,’ ‘Free As a Bird,’ and ‘Real Love,’” McCartney said.

Kozinn and McCartney discussed the first two Beatles reunion songs, ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love.’ Kozinn then asked, “And now you’re doing ‘Grow Old With Me?’”

“No. I don’t think so, no,” McCartney replied. “We’re not that keen on that one.” This is all that McCartney said about ‘Grow Old With Me’ in the interview.  

Kozinn then asked McCartney whether there would be a third single. McCartney said completing the other song the group worked on, which ultimately was released as ‘Now And Then’ in 2023, would be “difficult” and require “a hatchet job.” “I’m not sure we’re going to bother with that one,” McCartney said. 

Kozinn’s interview misrepresented

A separate article in the same issue of Beatlefan summarized Kozinn’s interview. It read, in part, “McCartney told Allan Kozinn that, contrary to reports out of the Dakota, the third partially completed track is not ‘Grow Old With Me,’ though that was one of the demos Ono provided. The track needs a lot of work, McCartney said, and might not be finished after all.”[6]

The Beatles Book, a publication based out of the U.K., reported on the Kozinn interview in its November issue. However, the magazine introduced a series of errors, misreading the passage above.

The magazine wrote, “While some sources continue to list the third new Beatles Anthology track as a reworking of John Lennon's 'Grow Old With Me,’ in an interview in the New York Times by Allan Kozinn, Paul McCartney claims that the group didn't begin to attempt finishing the song, because John's original demo required too much work.”[7]

There are three errors in this sentence. First, it said the interview was “in” the New York Times rather than “with” the newspaper. Second, it stated that the group didn’t begin to attempt finishing ‘Grow Old With Me,’ which McCartney never said. Finally, it said the song was not completed because it required too much work. McCartney said that about the song that eventually became ‘Now And Then,’ not about ‘Grow Old With Me.’ 

A ‘quote’ introduced

The Beatles Book errors might have stopped there. However, The Beatles Reunion Recording Sessions, a site established in the late ‘90s, repeated the errors. The site also added its own.

In its article on the March 20 and 21, 1995 Beatles recording sessions, the author wrote, “In a New York Times interview, Paul claimed that the group didn't even begin to record the fourth song given to them by Yoko, ‘Grow Old With Me’ because “John's original demo required too much work…””

The line “John’s original demo required too much work” which was taken from The Beatles Book – the magazine is listed on the page as a reference – was now in quotes and attributed to Paul McCartney.

Over subsequent decades, numerous articles, books, videos, and forum posts would reference this ‘quote.’[8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18] The quote is often attributed to an interview in the New York Times. However, McCartney never said anything of the kind.

So, was ‘Grow Old With Me’ worked on or wasn’t it?

There is no evidence that McCartney, Harrison, and Starr ever worked on ‘Grow Old With Me’ in the ‘90s in the same way that they did the other three songs. Of course, part of the reason people think this is due to The Beatles Book’s statement that “the group didn't begin to attempt finishing the song,” which it errantly attributed to McCartney!

Despite this error, it does appear to be true, that McCartney, Harrison, and Starr did not work on ‘Grow Old With Me.’ Jeff Lynne produced the two Beatles ‘90s reunion songs. He said in an interview in the November-December 1995 issue of Beatlefan that “there were three tracks altogether” that the surviving Beatles worked on. The interviewer specifically asked Lynne if the group worked on ‘Grow Old With Me.’

 “No. It was only the three,” Lynne replied.

Additionally, when Ringo Starr recorded ‘Grow Old With Me’ for his 2019 What’s My Name? album, he said to QQ, “I had never heard of the song, and had no awareness of it at all." While this seems an error in memory, as it is well-established that the song was given to the Threetles during the ‘90s, it further supports that the song was never worked on.

As mentioned above, early reports out of the Dakota in Beatlefan stated that the group had “worked on all the Lennon songs” before deciding to focus on ‘Free As A Bird.’[2] The Beatles Book riffed on this terminology in its April 1994 issue, stating, “They experimented with all three songs.”[19] It cited the Beatlefan article as its source.

This means that the Beatlefan report is the only indication the song might have been worked on in some fashion. That report was never corroborated by other sources, and, again, there is no indication that it was worked on in the way that the other three songs were.

Why didn’t the Beatles finish ‘Grow Old With Me’?

All McCartney says of ‘Grow Old With Me’ was that the group was not “keen” on the song. He doesn’t say why.

Some articles, all by writer Rip Rense, allege that George Harrison rejected the song.[20, 21, 22] In 2005, Rense wrote that the song was “rumored to be too poignant to handle.” Many years later, he wrote that the song was not worked on “reportedly because Harrison found it too sad, given Lennon's fate.”

However, as Rense notes, this is just rumor. Harrison gave very few interviews during the Anthology period. In those interviews, he never references ‘Grow Old With Me.’

Ringo Starr offered insight into why the group passed on ‘Grow Old With Me,’ though he doesn’t reference the song specifically. Starr said in 1995 of the other songs the three considered, “They'd been out, so we didn't want to do that.”[23]

This is certainly true of ‘Grow Old With Me.’ The only available demo of the song was released in 1984 on Milk and Honey, Lennon’s posthumous album with Yoko Ono. Other demo versions had been stolen.

Some might ask, if the Threetles didn’t consider working on ‘Grow Old With Me’ because it had already been out, why didn’t the same apply to ‘Real Love’? It was released on the 1988 soundtrack to the movie Imagine. While true, this was a different version of the song with different lyrics. The version on Anthology 2 had not been formally released and was not something that had been widely heard.

There are other plausible reasons the song wasn’t completed. Lennon’s demo had doubled vocals, a piano, and a rhythm box. This would have created technical challenges. There was also a great deal of media scrutiny about the group using Lennon’s demos. A Beatles reunion song, sung by a slain Lennon, about growing older might have seemed unseemly. It’s also possible that they just didn’t care for the song.

However, that is all just conjecture. What we know for certain is the group didn’t want to release songs that had already been widely heard by the group’s fans. ‘Grow Old With Me’ was not completed by the surviving Beatles.

Read a related article about “The McCartney quote that wasn’t.”

REFERENCES

[1] Page, Tim. Surviving Beatles join in Lennon song. Newsday. March 5, 1994. p13.

[2] Beatlenews roundup. Beatlefan, Issue No. 87, Vol. 15, No. 3. p.4.

[3] Beatlefan/EXTRA #41. Apr 8, 1995.

[4] Christman, Ed. Capitol Has Its Work Cut Out For Beatles Anthology. Billboard. September 2, 1995. p. 68.

[5] Beatlefan/EXTRA! September 10, 1995. Issue #50.

[6] Anthology sparks a Beatles blitz. Beatlefan. November-December, 1995. p.14.

[7] More Anthology snippets. The Beatles Book. November, 1995. p.41.

[8] The Beatles Recording Sessions, Tuesday 20 & Wednesday 21 March 1995.

[9] The John Lennon song rejected from The Beatles Anthology. Far Out Magazine. March 19, 2023.

[10] John Lennon's final song release was blocked by Beatles star. Express. March 27, 2023.

[11] Grow Old With Me. The Beatles Bible. Last updated March 3, 2023.

[12] The Threetles Recording Sessions. The Daily Beatle. June 16, 2023.

[13] Badman, Keith. The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After The Break-Up 1970-2001. 2009. Omnibus Press. Kindle Edition. p. 1305.

[14] John Lennon's Last Song Before Death: Why He Didn't Include It on Official Last Album Revealed. Music Times. April 3, 2023.

[15] Threetle stuff in the vaults. BeatlesLinks Fab Forum. May 28, 2001.

[16] Was George Harrison not fond of the Anthology project? Steve Hoffman Music Forums. September 10, 2022, Page 17.

[17] John Lennon Reaction – Grow Old With Me Reaction! Reactions to the Classics. September 8, 2022. 6min 45secs.

 [18] Jackson, Andrew Grant. Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of The Beatles' Solo Careers. Scarecrow Press. Kindle Edition. Chapter 8. Location 3917.

[19] Davis, Andy. A diary of recent news and events. The Beatles Book. April, 1994, No. 216, Page 32.

[20] Rense, Rip. One More Beatles Song, or Should They Just Let It Be? Washington Post. August 20, 2005.

[21] Rense, Rip. The Beatles' "Now and Then:" time warp, or timely? The Rip Post. November 20, 2023.

[22] Rense, Rip. Attention Apple! AI must rescue all four Beatles reunion songs. The Rip Post. Date unknown.

[23] Kozinn, Allan & Sharp, Ken. All-Star Q&A. Beatlefan. Summer 1995.  

Last updated September 15, 2025.