The John Vickers 1987 cover version of John Lennon’s ‘Grow Old With Me’

John Vickers in the studio in 2024. Photo by ASPHO.

I’ve written about the two earliest known cover versions of John Lennon’s song ‘Grow Old With Me’ by Foreign Affair (1984) and Marco Bonino (1985). The next ‘80s version comes from John Vickers on his 1987 album Transition (CBS 450976 1). 

Vickers is from Retford, England and moved to Cyprus in 1972. He subsequently had a show on CyBC radio for the next 17 years. He has had a long career in music and media. (Read a great profile here.)

Vickers released his first album, At Last, in 1979. Most recently, he released Back to Yesterday in 2024.

In 2025, Vickers told GrowOldWithMe.org via email:

I’ve been a Beatles fan since the age of 14, and I have always considered myself lucky to have grown up in the ‘60s (in the UK) and lived through the Beatles’ career as it happened. The first record I ever bought was “She Loves You” and I can still clearly remember hearing “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Hey Jude” on the radio for the first time. I used to say that the one (non-family) person who most influenced my life was Paul McCartney, and I still believe that.

Of covering John Lennon’s song ‘Grow Old With Me,’ Vickers said, “I had heard it on the John & Yoko album Milk and Honey and, knowing that only the demo existed, I thought it would be nice to do a 'proper' recording of it.”

Vickers’ version begins with a callout to Beethoven. He said:

Prior to recording the song I discovered that the melody bore a similarity to the slow movement of Beethoven's piano sonata in C minor ('Pathétique') and, encouraged by the fact that Billy Joel had borrowed the same tune on his song “This Night,” I used it as the introduction.

In doing so, Vickers also noted the link between Lennon’s Beatles song ‘Because’ and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (Piano Sonata No. 14).

Listen to John Vickers’ 1987 cover of ‘Grow Old With Me.’