Remember When: 14-Year-Old Paul McCartney Wrote the Prophetic “When I’m Sixty-Four”

In April or May of 1956, a 14-year-old Paul McCartney started contemplating his future self and what it would be like one day, when he was in his 60s.

Written inside McCartney’s family home at 20 Forthlin Road, considered the “birthplace of the Beatles,” he started imagining his later years—losing his hair, knitting sweaters by the fire, and going on holiday to the Isle of Wight—while wondering if his significant other would still want him then—Will you still need me, will you still feed me / When I’m sixty four?

There, McCartney started writing the melody and skeleton of “When I’m Sixty-Four.”

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‘Will you still need me, will you still feed me?’

Recorded in December of 1966 at Abbey Road Studios, and released on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a year later, “When I’m Sixty Four” was never released as a single but offered a premonition into the future, as far as McCartney was concerned.

When I get older, losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a Valentine
birthday greetings, bottle of wine?

If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me?
When I’m sixty-four? Ooh

You’ll be older too.
Ah, and if you say the word
I could stay with you.

I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings, go for a ride

Lennon’s Lyrics

Credited to Lennon-McCartney, when McCartney brought his old song to the studio, John Lennon contributed some scenarios of older age to the song.

“I think I helped Paul with some of the words, like ‘Vera, Chuck and Dave,’” recalled Lennon in 1972, “and ‘Doing the garden, digging the weeds’.”

Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?

The song was later featured in the Beatles’ 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine and later in the opening scene of the 1982 comedy-drama The World According to Garp, starring Robin Williams and Glenn Close.

“When I’m 65”?

In hindsight, McCartney admitted that “64” was a random number to use at the time and that he should have used a different age while writing the song. “It was really an arbitrary number when I wrote the song,” McCartney told the Los Angeles Times in 2006, when he was 64 years old.

“I probably should have called it ‘When I’m 65,’ which is the retirement age in England,” he joked. “And the rhyme would have been easy, ‘Something, something alive when I’m 65.’ But it felt too predictable. It sounded better to say 64.”

McCartney later shared a story of meeting someone in a retirement home who played the song for him on piano. “He said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I play some of your songs, and the most popular one is ‘When I’m Sixty-four,’ but I have to change the title to ‘When I’m 84’ because 64 seems young to those people. They don’t get it,’” recalled McCartney.

He understood the older man’s dilemma at the time. “If I were to write it now,” said McCartney, then 64, “I’d probably call it ‘When I’m 94.’ ”

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