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Thursday 25 June 2020

Grow Old with John, Paul and Ringo


A fan made mix of the instrumentation from Ringo Starr's version of the song, coupled with John Lennon's vocals from his home demos.

Description by the uploader:

It has often been suggested that when the Beatles were preparing the Anthology, Yoko provided more than just "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love" for consideration for reunion songs. Two other titles have been mentioned, an unreleased but bootlegged demo called "Now And Then" and "Grow Old With Me", which had been issued on the posthumous "Milk And Honey" album. Neither were completed.

In October 2019, Ringo released his version of John's demo of "Grow Old With Me", which features on his album "What's My Name". This new version featured Ringo on drums and vocals and Paul on bass and backing vocals, with guitarist Joe Walsh joining them and new string arrangement by Jack Douglas (producer of John's "Double Fantasy" album).

This is an attempt at presenting a version of what a Beatles version of the track could have sounded like. This uses the backing track from Ringo's version and John's vocal and piano from two alternate demos that have not been released officially. As Ringo's version was recorded in the Bb and John's original was in G, it was not possible to incorporate Ringo or Paul's vocals (there was no magic "Strawberry Fields Forever" blend possible, the vocals were just way too slow!).

7 comments:

absinthe said...

Corny arrangement/guitar. I'll stick with John's lo-fi demo. That's part of its charm.

Unknown said...

If John and Ringo's versions were in different keys, how could the backing tracks on Ringo's version (Joe Walsh's guitar, string parts) match up to John's version, unless you adjusted the speeds on them?

Popper said...

If John and Ringo's versions were in different keys, how could the backing tracks on Ringo's version (Joe Walsh's guitar, string parts) match up to John's version, unless you adjusted the speeds on them?

Digital software. You can so it yourself using Audacity.

piper909 said...

? My comment about bagpipes was removed??

piper909 said...

SORRY -- it's in a similar, related post. Ignore or delete the above please!

Ian Moore (Argentina) said...

In my experience with digital audio, if you pitch-shift music more than a semitone the audio breaks up and glitches start appearing. My guess is the lead vocals were recorded by a good (indeed very good) imitator, but that's not John. And that explains why Paul's vocals were not used ;-)

markjones1970 said...

Thats John singing, not an imitator