Fourteen years after Pete Townshend dismissed the very idea of growing up when he wrote “Hope I die before I get old,” a 40-year-old John Lennon sang a very different tune.
“I can hardly wait to see you come of age,” he sang in 1980 to his then-5-year-old son, Sean, unabashedly anticipating the future. And to his wife, Yoko Ono, he borrowed a sentiment from poet Robert Browning and crooned “Grow old with me / The best is yet to be … whatever fate decrees, we will see it through.”
Fate, however, had something other than old age in store for Lennon, who died at the hands of a crazed fan just a few months after recording those songs and many others that signaled the start of a new chapter in the ex-Beatle’s life.
“It’s hard to believe he would be 70,” Lennon’s friend Elton John said last week. “It’s hard to believe he missed out on the computer, on Twitter. I wonder what he would have made of it all? I have a feeling he would have grabbed and run with it. John Lennon, who gave so much; he would still be at the forefront.”
Full story: John Lennon at 70? Just imagine…. – latimes.com