In 1994, the widowed Yoko One gave the three surviving Beatles two cassette tapes containing four songs by John Lennon, who had labeled the tapes “For Paul”.
The four songs on the casettes were Free as a Bird, Real Love, Grow Old with Me, and Now and Then.
Paul, George, and Ringo worked in the studio to finish up and release Free as a Bird and Real Love as part of the Beatles Anthology project in 1995. They decided against doing any work on Grow Old with Me, since the song had already been released on Lennon’s posthumous album, “Milk and Honey.” Yoko later asked Beatles producer George Martin to add orchestration and instrumentation to the demo, releasing it as part the Lennon Anthology in 1998.
Although the three surviving Beatles also worked on Now and Then as part of the Free as a Bird and Real Love sessions, they decided against finishing up the song at that time, due to the poor audio quality of Lennon’s Demo. In 2022, technical advancements allowed the demo to be cleaned up, leading to a 2023 completion and release of the song as part of the remastered “Red and Blue” collection.
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