BOOTLEG VERSIONS

John Lennon recorded multiple home demos of ‘Grow Old With Me’ on both piano and guitar. However, as Yoko Ono painfully detailed in the liner notes to 1984’s Milk and Honey, they were all stolen with the exception of the version released on that album. “Everybody around us knew how important those cassettes were,” Ono wrote, describing the “wolves” that surrounded the family after Lennon’s death.

The theft of the home demos of ‘Grow Old With Me’ was an immeasurable loss to the Lennon family, adding to their pain, grief, and suffering. Ono said of ‘Grow Old With Me,’ “After his passing, all I had was a cassette of it. 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.”

Ono grimly stated in the summer of 1983, “When John died, I thought it was the worst thing that would ever happen. But that was only the beginning.” The theft of the tapes of ‘Grow Old With Me’ was very much part of that. Of course, the theft of the other demo versions of ‘Grow Old With Me’ also added to the loss for John Lennon’s tens of millions of fans.

Over the long course of time, some of the stolen home demos began to be released on bootlegs. To date, it apears that seven versions of ‘Grow Old With Me’ have been released on bootleg, with variants. It is unclear if additional versions of the song were recorded or not.

The bootlegs include two demos on guitar and four demos on piano. There is also an overdubbed piano version with a rhythm box. This was the version released on Milk and Honey, though that version had audio enhancements.

Both guitar versions are complete runthroughs. Lennon can be heard saying at the beginning of the second version, “And then the next day.” Presumably this was recorded the day after he first recorded the song.

The first two piano demos are complete run-throughs of the song. The next is a fragment where Lennon says at the beginning, “Bit for the middle eight, huh?” He then plays a short section that leads into the middle eight of the song and says, “That’s how it goes. Okay let’s try it,” as he makes changes to the song. (Aside: To me, this minor change makes the song, with the descending chords fully delivering the song’s emotional impact.)

Of note, Lennon saying “Okay let’s try it” is included at the beginning of the officially released  version of ‘Grow Old With Me’ on 2020’s Gimme Some Truth: The Ultimate Mixes. It was not included on any prior officially released version.

The final piano demo, which presumably came immediately after the fragment where he worked on the middle eight, is another full run-through of the song. It includes the changed section that precedes the middle eight.

Lennon subsequently overdubbed additional vocals and a rhythm box onto this version. This was the version released on Milk and Honey, though the original album version was enhanced in the studio. Ono said in the liner notes to Milk and Honey that the version was,  “The one John and I recorded together in our bedroom with a piano and a rhythm box.”

BOOTLEG HISTORY OF ‘GROW OLD WITH ME’

Here I detail, as best I understand it, the history of bootleg versions of John Lennon’s ‘Grow Old With Me.’ I do so based almost entirely on the 2009 book John Lennon Solo Bootleg Discography (JLSBD).[1] Note that it is possible that this book is incomplete or in error, which would call into question the information below. Additionally, this book only goes up to but does not include 2009. Please take the information below with a grain of salt.

JLSBD lists four categories of bootlegs of ‘Grow Old With Me.’ The first is ‘Demo, piano and drum machine, Dakota.’ There are 20 listings. Next is ‘Double tracked vocal,’ which has one listing. Then there is ‘Bermuda, July 1980,’ which also has one listing. Finally, there is ‘Milk and Honey album official release version.’ This has two listings. Looking within these cagtegories, all of the demos appear to be based on the version of ‘Grow Old With Me’ released on Milk and Honey.

The first bootleg version of ‘Grow Old With Me’, based on JLSBD, appears to have been released on vinyl in 1988. This was the version of song on ‘Milk and Honey’ without the studio enhancements. This bootleg came from the radio show The Lost Lennon Tapes (TLLT), which played this version of the song on March 7, 1988.[2] It includes a section with Yoko Ono speaking at the end of the song. This demo version was subsequently released in 1989 under a different album name, also on vinyl.

In 1991, the full version of ‘Grow Old With Me’ on Milk and Honey prior to the studio enhancements was released on bootleg CD. This appears, as best I can tell from JLSBD, to have been the first digital bootleg of ‘Grow Old With Me.’ This same version appeared on another CD bootleg under a different label in 1996.

Prior to 2009, at least according to JLSBD, bootleg versions of ‘Grow Old With Me’ all appear to have been based on the version released on ‘Milk and Honey.’ That changed that year.

In 2009, two bootlegs were released, both from the same Japanese label and issued in successive releases. They contained alternate demos of ‘Grow Old With Me.’ The first bootleg contained a guitar demo of ‘Grow Old With Me.’ It also contained an additional piano demo of the song. The other bootleg contained the demo of the song with the piano and rhythm box (sans the additions on Milk and Honey, 1984), a differrent acoustic guitar demo from the other bootleg, and two piano demos, one of which included the fragment changing the lead in to the middle eight. (NB: These bootlegs are not listed in JLSBD, which was published in 2009, the same year these bootlegs were released.)

The ‘Grow Old With Me’ Wikipedia page notes that alternate, bootleg versions of ‘Grow Old With Me’ first began to appear on YouTube in 2009. (Full disclosure, I have written much of the content on that page, though not that part.) This was likely due to these two Japanese bootlegs being released that year.

The release of these two bootlegs albums in 2009 and their subsequent uploading to YouTube ultimately made alternate versions of ‘Grow Old With Me’ more widely available, albeit in stolen, bootleg form. At least six of the seven known demos of ‘Grow Old With Me’ were in the wild by 2009. This was a full 29 years after they had been recorded and subsequently stolen.

[1] John Eustace and Phill Boylett. John Lennon Solo Bootleg Discography. Athena Press, 2009.

[2] Episode 88-11. March 7, 1988. The Lost Lennon Tapes. 48 minutes, 29 seconds.