Many Years From Now

Paul McCartney: Now he's 64. (Photo Jim Cooper/Associated Press)

On June 18, Paul McCartney turns 64, an age he made memorable with his song When I’m 64. When the Beatles released it in 1967 on the iconic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, the song struck all sorts of discordant and anachronistic notes. The least psychedelic song on that drug-induced album, When I’m 64 was less a rock ‘n’ roll song than a music-hall-ready number (it featured uncool clarinets). And it came out during that era’s so-called youthquake, with anti-authority protester Jerry Rubin famously ranting, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” Ever the parent-impressing type, Paul departed from his generation’s script by penning a sweet little ditty about the pleasures of growing old gracefully, preferably with a doting spouse in tow. In it, the young man asks his beloved, “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?” Herewith, a brief look at the song and its creator’s progress through time, en route to this once almost unimaginable age.

June 18, 1942: James Paul McCartney born in Liverpool.

Before the fame. (Photo Keystone/Getty Images)

1957: McCartney wrote When I’m 64 when he was only 15, imagining an idyllic, albeit financially tight old age spent pottering about the house, gardening and replacing fuses, while his lover knits fireside. “Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight — if it’s not too dear.” (With a current net worth of over $1 billion, McCartney could even buy a cottage if so inclined.) The Beatles (then known as the Quarrymen) would play the song in gigs in Liverpool and Hamburg without amplification, whenever the power went out.

1967: The recorded version of the song was played in public for the first time at a press reception for Sgt. Pepper with New York photographer Linda Eastman in attendance. She promptly fell for McCartney and his vision of lifelong love.

1980: Interviewed shortly before his assassination, John Lennon sneered about 64: “I would never even dream of writing a song like that.” Still, McCartney’s songwriting partner did contribute the amusingly Coronation Street-worthy names of the grandchildren mentioned in the song: Vera, Chuck and Dave. Lennon’s disdain yet again illustrated the contrast between the two halves of the most successful songwriting duo of all time, with McCartney often serving up sweet to Lennon’s sour.

Spring 1986: “I’m leaving [my hair gray],” McCartney said in an interview. “When you’re past 40, the game is up, you know? [Beatles drummer] Ringo [Starr] told me off about it, though. He reckoned I ought to colour it, like I make him feel old if I look a bit old.” In fact, McCartney would later change his mind, dyeing his hair brown.

Fall 1986: “We’re all getting older every second,” the aging pop star philosophized. “My main thing is just to try and enjoy it. And I’m very surprised to find out that, more often than not, I do.”

1997: Barry Miles’ biography of McCartney is released, taking its title, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, from the song, which begins, “When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now.” The bio quotes McCartney on the song’s lyrics, saying: “‘Will you still need me?’ is still a love song, but ‘Will you still feed me?’ goes into Goon Show humour.”

Paul and Linda McCartney. (Photo Getty Images)

1998: His spouse Linda dies of breast cancer, scotching his dream of spending his entry into his 65th year with a longtime companion.

2002: McCartney marries 34-year-old Heather Mills, a former model and anti-landmine campaigner.

July 2003: During a state visit to China, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is asked by a group of university students to sing a song. He declines, but his game wife Cherie sings When I’m 64 without backup.

Summer 2003: The 61-year-old recalls once thinking, “It would be pretty unseemly to still be playing rock ‘n’ roll at age 30.” Still, joining his geezer-rocker contemporaries, he completed yet another world tour, drawing the most fans of any touring act.

2004: The BBC launches a series called When I’m 64, in which two older widowers surprise themselves and all their friends by falling in love with each other.

2005: After speaking of 64-year-old James Gadson as an “old black drummer,” McCartney, then 63, corrected himself: “I say ‘old, black drummer’ and it’s terrifying actually. He’s about my age. Excuse me. I’m still coming to grips with the fact that I’m an old white cat.” During the year, his U.S. tour sold out and grossed $77.3 million. Asked by Larry King during the tour how he felt about the song as he neared his 64th birthday, McCartney replied: “I’m not singing that yet, but I have a nasty feeling I might be next year. My kids said to me, ‘Dad, you have got to disappear off the face of the planet.’ … If you don’t see me next year, you’ll know why.”

Rock legend with dye job. (Photo Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Feb. 5, 2006: The boomers consistently deny that they’ve grown old, and McCartney, evidently, is no stand-alone, telling The Los Angeles Times, “I met someone who plays piano in an old person’s home and he said, ‘I play some of your songs and the most popular one is When I’m 64, but I have to change the title to When I’m 84, because 64 seems young to those people.’ If I were to write it now, I’d probably call it When I’m 94.” He also commented on the song’s selection of the age of 64: “It was really an arbitrary number. I probably should have called it When I’m 65, which is the retirement age in England. And the rhyme would have been easy, ‘something, something alive, when I’m 65.’”

May 17, 2006: McCartney and his wife announce they are separating as a result of constant media attention.

June 18, 2006: From a report on an Ohio fan event: “Paul may not be in the mood to celebrate this year, but that’s not stopping the Beatle People of the Miami Valley. [Their leader Ann] Stevens will be celebrating with sheet cake and free coffee mugs with one of the summer’s three Breakfast with the Beatles live shows, 9 a.m. to noon at the Fraze Pavilion in Kettering.”

Alec Scott writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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