![]() ![]() ![]() McCartney, who recently appeared on the cover of the magazine of AARP, an association of older Americans, does not appear to be losing his hair yet, despite the song's augury. Thanks to seasoning (and Viagra), males are not necessarily half the men they used to be. ![]() Gail Sheehy, the author, who, at 68, is still guiding readers through life's passages, said today's 64-year-olds have a "360-degree view of life." They may believe in yesterday, but they also can't stop thinking about tomorrow. ![]() When Paul Simon turned 64 last year, McCartney called and serenaded him with it. Julian Lennon sang it in an Allstate Insurance commercial. "The little things expressed in the song, such as working the garden and going for a Sunday morning drive, were part of his life with Linda."Īccording to most accounts, McCartney wrote the lyrics for his father (his mother had died of breast cancer when he was 13) and the song was recorded not long after the elder McCartney turned 64. "The bliss of being with a lifelong partner, as expressed in 'When I'm Sixty-Four,' was shattered by Linda's tragic death," Spizer said. Last month, he announced his separation from his second wife, Heather Mills, who is 38. McCartney's first wife, Linda, died in 1998 at 56, of breast cancer they had been married 29 years. "While it may have been done tongue-in-cheek," said Bruce Spizer, a Beatles biographer, "life began to imitate art." The song's promise of retirement with a longtime partner has proved, at best, bittersweet for him. Half the over-65 population define themselves as middle-aged or even young, although a greater proportion are likely to be perilously overweight.Īnd judging by his personal life, McCartney missed the mark, too. They also age more slowly, or so they say. People live longer today (technically, no one has died of old age since 1951, when the government dropped that official cause). More of the better off own their vacation homes outright (never mind renting "a cottage in the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear") while the less well- off who own homes have the newly popular option of reverse mortgages. Since 1967, American divorce rates have more than doubled (three-quarters of men married in the late 1950s celebrated their 20th wedding anniversaries with their first wife, compared with about half who married in the early 1970s).Ī smaller proportion of Americans over 65 are poor today, but more delay retirement because they want to, or have to. Today, many of those who embraced that quaint vision of enduring love, caring, knitting and puttering in retirement - "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four?" - could not have been more wrong. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." But just as George Orwell's "1984" proved to be an abiding prophecy of a dystopic future for so many impressionable readers, McCartney's lyrics delivered to the self-consciously youthful generation of baby boomers an enduring if satirical definition what their golden age might be like "many years from now." He was a teenager when he wrote the tune for "When I'm Sixty-Four," and only 24 when the Beatles recorded it in 1967 for "Sgt. Notwithstanding those expectations and the greatly exaggerated rumors decades ago of his death, McCartney turns 64 on Sunday, Father's Day. NEW YORK - In 1942, when James Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool, the average life expectancy of a British infant boy was 63 years. ![]()
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