Recent articles about John Lennon’s ‘Grow Old With Me’ – Winter 2025/2026

There were six mentions of John Lennon’s ‘Grow Old With Me’ in articles that crossed my desk this winter.

I will discuss each article here. Note that, in some cases, as before, I am doing so to correct the record, as some of the articles have significant inaccuracies. 

ARTICLE 1: The song that soothed Yoko Ono after John Lennon’s death: “I didn’t want people to take it from me.” Far Out. December 22, 2025.

As I have written before, you read Far Out at your own peril. It is a factory of misinformation.

This article is ostensibly written in a sympathetic tone, imagining Yoko Ono’s experience after John Lennon’s murder. The article says of Ono:

She was tormented in those days and weeks following the death, but one thing provided comfort. At all times, she carried a cassette of ‘Grow Old With Me’, one of the last demo songs Lennon recorded before his death. It was a scrappy recording, captured at home and holding really only an idea of a song, but to Ono, it was a piece of her husband that she clung to throughout the worst days.

“After his passing, all I had was a cassette of it. I had it in my handbag,” she said. It was so important to her that she was truly guarding it with her life, adding, “When I went to sleep, I had some bells on my door, so if anyone came in, I’d hear it. I didn’t want people to take it from me.”

It’s a bittersweet tune. “Spending our lives together / Man and wife together / World without end,” Lennon sings on the love song that begins, “Grow old along with me / The best is yet to be.” Now facing up to a life where she wouldn’t be able to grow old alongside her love, Ono held this recording close to soothe herself as she navigated the unthinkable.

Let’s start with the “holding really only an idea of a song.” This is inaccurate. The song was complete. Ono described in the liner notes of Milk and Honey that ‘Grow Old With Me’ was originally intended to be the “backbone” of Double Fantasy but was pushed back as they considered the arrangement.

The Ono quote here comes from the November 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, where Ono picks her Top 10 John Lennon playlist. However, this Far Out article is a gross misreading of what Ono intended with this quote.

Ono was not holding onto the cassette out of comfort. She was doing so out of fear. Her husband had been taken from her and now people were stealing his belongings. All other demo copies of ‘Grow Old With Me’ had been stolen. Ono wrote in the liner notes to the 1984 album Milk and Honey:

‘Grow Old With Me’ was a song John made several cassettes of, as we discussed the arrangements for it. Everybody around us knew how important those cassettes were. They were in safekeeping, some in our bedroom, some in our cassette file, and some in a vault. All of them disappeared since then except the one on this record. It may be that it was meant to be this way, since the version that was left to us was John’s last recording. The one John and I recorded together in our bedroom with a piano and a rhythm box.

From ’81 to ’83, it was as though Sean and I were standing in a snowfield surrounded by human wolves, who claimed themselves “close friends” and meanwhile raped and desecrated John’s body in front of our eyes. We saw beautiful rainbows behind the black forest and people calling us with love from the distance, but there was no way to let them know what was happening. And Sean and I decided to call the rainbow to us by sharing our song with you.

That passage does not describe someone who is receiving comfort from the tapes. Rather, it describes part of the horror that occurred to the family after Lennon’s death. Again, read articles from Far Out at your own peril.

ARTICLE 2: The song that soothed Yoko Ono after John Lennon’s death: “I didn’t want people to take it from me.” American Songwriter. December 23 2025.

Shamefully, this article by Alex Hopper cannibalizes the above Far Out article by a different author, taking thrust of it and turning it into American Songwriter’s content. In doing so, it amplifies the former article’s misinformation. It is part of the echo chamber of content creation associated with the Beatles in the social media age.

The article states:

There was one Lennon song that managed to comfort Ono in the wake of her husband’s death and public backlash, “Grow Old With Me.”

We can’t think of a more heartbreaking choice of song for Ono to listen to in the aftermath of Lennon’s murder than “Grow Old With Me.” Grow old along with me / The best is yet to be / When our time has come / We will be as one, the lyrics read, twisting the knife a little further.

Nevertheless, Ono clung tightly to an at-home cassette recording of this track to help her get through the dark times.

…

With all the fuss, Ono worried that her last connection to Lennon, the cassette tape, would be taken by some unruly fan.

“After his passing, all I had was a cassette of it,” Ono once said. “I had it in my handbag…When I went to sleep, I had some bells on my door, so if anyone came in, I’d hear it. I didn’t want people to take it from me.”

As above, this is a gross misreading of history. While the article is attempting to extend a sympathetic tone, it is, in my opinion, just further disservice to the Lennon family. Worse, it blatantly rips off someone else’s content to do it. 

Moreover, Ono was not worried about an “unruly fan.” She was worried about, in her own words, “human wolves, who claimed themselves ‘close friends.’” That is, in my opinion, considerably worse.

Finally, the tape was far from “her last connection to Lennon.” To say that it was is absurd.

ARTICLE 3: The Beatles song George Martin never wanted to work on: “I wasn’t too happy” Far Out. January 9, 2026.

This is an article about George Martin declining to work on the Beatles reunion songs on the Beatles Anthology. As I have previously written, this is a myth. Martin was never asked to work on the Beatles reunion songs. Martin said in 1997, “I think I might have done it if they asked me, but they didn’t ask me.”

The article briefly mentions ‘Grow Old With Me’ in a tortured sequence of words. It reads:

Lennon was the least knowledgeable about music theory, but there was no doubt that he was the heart of the band, and while Martin was more than happy to provide a string arrangement to the song ‘Grow Old With Me’, he drew the line at working on The Beatles Anthology.

That sentence is a dazzling grouping of non sequitor and misinformation. I’ll just say, Martin worked extensively on the Beatles Anthology albums. He was the producer!  He did not work on the ‘reunion’ songs.

Overall, this is another garbage article from Far Out.

ARTICLE 4: John Lennon's Most Heartbreaking Song Paul McCartney Called Beautiful. Collider. February 21, 2026.

This article discusses Paul McCartney’s affection for the Lennon song ‘Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy).’ It lists ‘Grow Old With Me’ as  “among [Lennon’s] most enduring solo works.”

ARTICLE 5:The Beatle George Martin called “one of the great people of our time.“ Far Out. February 26, 2026

Are you sensing a theme here? Another article from Far Out, another mention of John Lennon’s ‘Grow Old With Me.’

This article discusses Martin’s response to Lennon’s death. It briefly mentions that Martin worked with ‘Grow Old With Me,’ stating:

Although Martin did eventually get time to work with some of Lennon’s final compositions with tunes like ‘Grow Old With Me’, that didn’t stop him from doing his own fair share of grieving in the process. 

I’ll just let that sentence stand (or not) on its own.

ARTICLE 6: 4 Songs Brothers-in-Law, Ringo Starr and Joe Walsh Co-Wrote From 1983 Through 2019. American Songwriter. March 20, 2026.

This article makes brief mention of ‘Grow Old With Me.’ It states:

What’s My Name also features a return performance by Paul McCartney, who appears on Starr’s cover of John Lennon’s Milk and Honey track ‘Grow Old With Me,’ one of the last songs the late Beatle wrote before his death in 1980.

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That’s it for articles about John Lennon’s ‘Grow Old With Me from Winter 2025-2026!