He might need to change it to `When I'm 84'

He's not losing his hair, although color seems to be an issue.

He does have grandchildren, although no Vera, Chuck or Dave.

He has been known to do a little gardening work, "digging the weed," so to speak. In fact, one of his multiple marijuana busts was for growing the stuff on his Scottish farm back in the early '70s.

Given the recent upheaval in his personal life, it's unclear who'll feed him, although there's no doubt he'll be taken care of.

Yes, the cultural alarm clock that Paul McCartney set 39 years ago is ringing. The man who sang "When I'm Sixty-Four" in 1967 turns 64 on June 18.

"I do remember that on the [song's recording] session, we all figured out it would be 2006 when Paul was 64," Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick recalled on the phone from Los Angeles, "and we had a good laugh about that and wondered what we'd be doing."

That McCartney is reaching the age he whimsically imagined so long ago is an unavoidable milestone, a ready-made occasion for comparing snapshots, then and now, of the singer and his contemporaries. "You'll be older too," after all. It's also the inevitable moment when the words of the young man are shoved into the face of the old -- or let's just say older -- man.

At least McCartney's tongue-in-cheek portrait of his dotage was affectionate enough that it shouldn't be too tough for him to swallow. Fellow '60s icons Pete Townshend and Mick Jagger have had to choke on the strident, aging-averse declarations of their younger selves. Townshend has become a walking ironic counterpoint to the classic line he wrote for the Who's "My Generation": "I hope I die before I get old." As for the wiry Stones frontman, he once was famously quoted as sneering, "I'd rather be dead than singing 'Satisfaction' when I'm 45." Jagger was 62 when he sang it at this year's Super Bowl.

McCartney didn't equate old age with death in "When I'm Sixty-Four," but his song is nonetheless revealing in the way it views the autumn years from a spring chicken's perspective. The ex-Beatle has told interviewers he wrote the song when he was "about 16," placing it in the late '50s, eight or so years before the Beatles finally recorded it for their landmark album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." The Beatles actually used to perform it in their earliest years when they were playing clubs in England and Hamburg, Germany.