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John Lennon and Yoko Ono "Double Fantasy" (1980)
(Just Like) Startin' Over/Kiss Kiss Kiss/Clean Up Time/Give Me
Something/I'm Losing You/I'm Moving On/Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)//Watching
The Wheels/Yes I'm Your Angel/Woman/Beautiful Boys/Dear Yoko/Every Man Has A
Woman Who Lives Him/Hard Times Are Over
"Hubble
bubble...toil, no trouble!"
Rather fittingly, 'Double Fantasy' has been living a
double life for much of its thirty-five year existence. The album was released
on November 17th 1980, breaking a five year wall of silence from John and Yoko,
to initially devastatingly poor reviews and sluggish sales that led to an
all-time Lennon chart low (not counting the 'unfinished music' LPs) of #14 in
the UK and #11 in the US. Three weeks later the intended critical reviews had
been withdrawn and pulped, the album quickly became the best-seller of the 1980
(despite only being eligible for sales across five weeks of the year) and 'Double
Fantasy' went on to win the grammy for 'best album of 1982' (it was too late
for entry in 1981 but the organisers couldn't bear the thought of leaving the
album out!) Most of you will already have guessed the reasons why: this was the
record Lennon paid for with his life, stepping into the public eye after five
years away only to be gunned down on the steps of his own apartment, still
clutching the master-tapes of a Yoko Ono track intended for release as a
speedy-follow up. Though in life 'Double Fantasy' was a rather flimsy and
lightweight album, underwhelming after five years of hibernation and stories
had led fans to believe that if Lennon ever came back it would have to be with
something massive and powerful, in death it became Lennon's last will and
testament and the easiest purchase for fans to lay their hands on to pledge
their allegiance to Lennon's ideals and values, perhaps forgetting that not
much of what made Lennon great was actually on this LP. Somewhere along the
road to mythology the line between the double lives has become blurred, with
the several months of hearing nothing but Lennon's songs from this album and
the fact that all of John's songs from this record have become must-haves for
compilation albums (though almost certainly for material considerations, Geffen
not having much other product to make licensing the songs on that label
worthwhile) transforming this album's fortunes to the point where everyone now
assumes it was always a 'classic' album and no one dares speaks ill of this
album - even though for three weeks everyone hated it. All these decades on
'Double Fantasy' has been transformed into becoming Lennon's post-'Imagine'
masterpiece, critics have been silenced and fans have all changed their opinion
- all except me. Much as I still continue to mourn Lennon's death (even though
it happened before I was born, I still see the Lennon-shaped hole in music
where our great talent should be), much as I admire one of the greatest canons
in music, much as I can see how moved people are by this album's unwitting
'final statements' of contentment that now ring out with such irony, I still
can't love this album - because by Lennon's high standards there's nothing much
here to love. 'Double Fantasy' is a playing-it-safe record by a man who'd never
sunk so low as to play it safe for any length of time before, stretched out
across half a record. Even the probable 'real' reason behind this record (that Lennon was afraid of being too 'down' because Sean was so good at picking up on his moods and he wanted his 'twin' - both the same day 35 years apart to be happy) makes sense for Lennon but not for the listener.
One of the people who felt angry and betrayed about
this album was Lennon's killer Mark David Chapman, who never did offer a real
motive for killing Lennon but came closest in a throwaway line to police that
Lennon had become a 'sellout, a phoney' (thus mimicking a line Yoko herself
uses to accuse Lennon on her iciest song 'I'm Moving On'; Chapman's line about
'wanting to become famous' was just made up copy by journalists trying to sell
papers who knew they were never likely to get sued). One of the weirder aspects
of the case is that - again despite the mythology that's now gone down in
history - Chapman presented himself as a lifelong Lennon 'fan' despite having
no Beatles or Lennon records in his collection at the time of his arrest and
none of his friends or family remembering him showing any real interest in the
fab four past watching the 'Ed Sullivan' show that everybody watched (in fact
his reluctance to buy any Beatles records whatsoever marks him out from a good
three-quarters of his generation). However the one exception was 'Double
Fantasy', which Chapman had bought a week before travelling to New York from
Hawaii and even got autographed a few hours before the murder when Chapman
reportedly 'lost his bottle' with so many passers-by around and needed an
excuse to be hanging round the Lennons' Dakota home. When asked why he
considered Lennon a 'traitor' Chapman mentioned both this album and an
interview for Rolling Stone Magazine published three days before the shooting
on December 8th 1980. While no group, even the Spice Girls, deserve to be
harmed in any way just because of their music - and there are far more
arguments for why Chapman wasn't what he said he was (his blank conditioning,
his odd behaviour, the expensive airplane flight he took despite nobody knowing
where he got the money from, his lack of interest or knowledge in the Beatles
and his confusing links to Russia and communism - though I still say Reagan is
a more likely suspect given that the last thing Lennon did before tucking Sean
in at night and mixing Yoko's track 'Walking On Thin Ice' was organise his
first rally in eight years, on behalf of Japanese War Veterans living in
America denied medical funding and social care) it's interesting that Chapman
should consider himself 'betrayed' by this album and Lennon a 'phoney' for
releasing it. Because that's more or less in line with what a lot of the
(ultimately unpublished) reviews seemed to think of this album too - and what a
few braver Lennon fans have sheepishly admitted to me down the years.
No artist is ever going to stand still and Lennon in
particular was on the move permanently in his quest for the next new sound, so
it's no surprise that his sound should have changed so drastically after five
years out of the public eye. Perhaps sensibly, Lennon delays recapturing his
youth for another time (though the first draft of intended sequel 'Milk and
Honey' suggests a much more youthful album to come) and sings a lot about being
'middle aged'. However what's less forgivable across 'Double Fantasy' is how
badly Lennon wants to re-write history, put down all his earlier mistakes to
misguided youth and repeat over and over how much better contented middle age
is than fighting the system. 'No rats aboard the perfect ship' Lennon sings
smugly on 'Clean Up Time', a song that apparently flies in the face of every
hippie ideal going. If you hear it in the right mindset, 'Watching The Wheels'
basically tells fans that they were getting to be a drag and Lennon needed a
break, never thinking of 'us' once. Many of the other songs sound smug and
toothless compared to anything from Lennon's past- exaggerate all this by a
five year wait for Lennon's anti-establishment roar and it's easy to see why
this album was (at first) disliked as this record was and if any record was
going to get you shot by a fan devastated by apparent utter betrayal then it's
this one. Only Mark Chapman was not your average killer. He was no avenging
hippie with a point to prove, just a security guard leading a boring life and a
fixation with the book 'Catcher In The Rye' and in contrast to how most of the
media portrayed him wasn't that much of a loner or a misfit - most of that came
from vague acquaintances wanting to see their own names in print - and was
happily married with a steady job, however low his wages (a novel I've always
refused to read because of its close proximity in the case - Chapman handed it
in to the arresting officer as his 'motive' and sat calmly reading it while
Yoko and the Dakota security guards rushed around desperately for an ambulance
- although from what others have told me there is no connection between the
book and the deed except for a 'loner' character as Chapman undoubtedly was
portrayed in kinder circumstances than normal).
And 'Double Fantasy' was in no way an accurate
portrayal of the sheer hell Lennon had been through in the five years he'd been
away. Lennon had first toyed with releasing an album in 1978 when the writing
bug first began to hit him seriously, but depending on which source you read
had either sunk into a dark depression that year or was so contented in his
current life that he finally put his old demons to rest - either way the series
of demos that Lennon recorded that year are nothing like 'Double Fantasy' -
they're sad, lonely, self-critical, full of doubts and fears and have a
'haunted' quality that beats even 'Walls and Bridges' (imagine the
'Lennon/Plastic Ono Band' album without the screaming and even sparser
performances). After writing his heart out across some twenty semi-finished
songs Lennon seems to have abandoned his muse again for another two years,
until the first half of 1980 when he was on holiday without Yoko but with
friends, who were planning to sail to Bermuda (a favourite JohnandYoko holiday
destination). Lennon had chosen his shipmates wisely and they were all
experiences sailors, far more so than he, but a violent storm that raged for
some twenty-four hours left even his hardened colleagues sea-sick and only
Lennon was immune (because, so he thought, of all those years strung out on
heroin when his body had trained itself never to be sick in 'public'). Stuck at
the tiller facing heavy storms and singing sea shanties to keep himself awake,
Lennon quickly ran out of songs so began to invent his own, unlocking his
creative side as he faced mother nature head on. These immediate songs, so far
as we can tell without dates, are the vibrant, largely joyous songs later to be
released on 'Milk and Honey' full of life and hope. And yet Lennon passed
almost all of these songs over for a sequence of songs written a few weeks
later, when Lennon had re-found his sea-legs and had embarked on what he wanted
his 'proper' comeback record to sound like.
I've often wondered why Lennon was so determined to
make his record sound the way it did. Lennon seems to have been both terrified
and excited at the thought of releasing this record, worried that his fanbase
might have forgotten him while simultaneously wanting to 'reach out' to the
audience with his latest set of discoveries ('well here we are at 40 and did
you all get through it and wasn't the 70s a drag? Let's hope for better in the
80s!') He spent far longer working on the album than normal, with a far higher
percentage of unreleased songs than any other Lennon album and a lot more
re-takes than usual too, honing this album down with the help of Yoko and Jack
Douglas and leaving all of the 'Lennon sounding' songs for another time. Why?
Everything here sounds artificial and sentimental, as if in Yoko's words from
the album, Lennon is putting on his 'window smile' and pretending everything is
a-ok when, pre-1980 at least, it clearly wasn't - other performers we could
'forgive; for this much more but this the sort of schmaltz Lennon usually hated
and spent his life trying to overthrow. Most reviewers at the time assumed that
Lennon had simply gone soft in middle age - but while Lennon was understandably
'comfier' than his younger, restless self we know from the 1978 demos and the
'Milk and Honey' recordings that by far the most toothless songs all appeared
on this record, suggesting it was deliberate. Now it probably doesn't help
coming to this album so soon after re-reviewing the 'Plastic Ono Band's angry
attack on anything less than 'real' but it's noticeable how few lyrics on this
record deal with anything approaching 'real' feeling. 'Startin' Over' so
screams 'comeback single' that it's easy to miss the fact that it doesn't
really say anything. 'Woman' is a kinder, softer tribute to female-kind that
Lennon had obviously been trying to say for years - but compare it to the
outrage of 'Woman Is The Nigger Of The World' and you soon notice just how
different Lennon's emotions are, from angry idealist to diluted crooner.
'Watching The Wheels' denies all sense of Lennon wasting his life away - but
doesn't tell us what Lennon's been doing and lacks any sense of, well, anything
(one of Lennon's greatest strengths was always wearing his heart on his sleeve
so obviously, but these songs are so upfront about having nothing to say that
for once it isn't ok). 'Dear Yoko' rewrites 'Oh Yoko' via 'Buddy Holly', a
'safe' option no matter how catchy it may be. Only the charming 'Beautiful
Boy', written out of love for the second child Lennon thought he'd never have
and the album's one 1978 leftover, the angry snappish 'I'm Losing You' have any
'real' emotion and everything else rings hollow somehow. Even Yoko snaps 'I'm
moving on, you're getting phoney' in reply. Yet 'Double Fantasy' could have
been oh so different - a far superior version of 'I'm Losing You' with a
then-contemporary new wave act Cheap Trick playing instead of the sessions
musicians - was nixed at John's insistence even though Yoko adored it. The tracks
from 'Milk and Honey' recorded at the same session have emotion in droves: 'I'm
Steppin' Out' (joy), 'Nobody Told Me' (frustration), 'Grow Old Along With Me'
(love), 'My Little Flower Princess' (guilt) and 'Borrowed Time' (nostalgia)
have exactly what this album is 'missing' (I'm not sure it would have saved
Lennon from death, but had he switched his albums round and kept 'Milk and
Honey' far less critics and fans would have 'betrayed' on release).
What makes this sudden 'false Lennon' antiseptic
sound worse is that we can only blame part of it on the period technology. Jack
Douglas, chosen deliberately by Yoko for his 'sound' with bands like Alice
Cooper, Cheap Trick and Miles Davis, expertly helps Yoko get her songs onto
tape whilst sounding fresh and contemporary and was clearly chosen because of
his track record making rockers sound hard and edgy. Many fans expected Lennon
to come out sounding like Cheap Trick when they heard the news of his
appointment (ie something more like 'Milk and Honey') making what turned up on
this album even more of a shock. He could - and briefly did - have done the
same for Lennon: the 'Cheap Trick' 'I'm Losing You' shows just how great this
record have been - and though sketchy 'beginner's takes' much of 'Milk and
Honey' has a far more timeless-yet-of-its-time sound than 'Double Fantasy'.
This finished record just sounds over-polished and lush, curiously mixed so
that all of Lennon's witty asides are ducked low in the mix. Perhaps the real
reason this record gets on my nerves so much is that it sounds like a series of
in-jokes we were never intended to hear (the album is full of messages to Sean
and Yoko, buried until the oh-so-superior-I-can't-believe-it's-the-same-album
'Stripped Down' remix in 2010 laid them bare). I've never understood why -
Lennon was always leaving 'messages' for fans but we'd always been able to hear
them before, even if we played them backwards - and what are we to make of the
'don't sell a cow' story' or Lennon's monologue sent from Bermuda instead of a
postcard (which cuts off a few words in, even though the 'Stripped' Down'
version reveals it to be a most beautiful Lennonisms, about how he's bought
Yoko a painting and isn't sure if he should tell her even though he'll be home
long before the painting 'and it's hanging up right now behind your desk,
right?') Thankfully 'Milk and Honey' will be full of even more spontaneity like
this and Douglas' own work isn't too far removed from this style - so the lack
of this style across 'Double Fantasy' (indeed the lack of any humour at all,
unless you count the woeful attempt on Yoko's 'Yes I'm Your Angel') must have
been Lennon's decision. Why? These songs could have done with more charm and
humour. Given how Yoko's records came out sounding fresh and innervated it also
seems fair to say that Lennon chose to ignore the new wave sound Douglas had
been hired to provide. Why? Lennon had been no hermit while he'd been away,
scouring the charts for anything of interest and like his wife he'd fallen in
love with new wave (his next lot of sessions booked after 'Double Fantasy'
weren't for his own record but to record a cover of Blondie's 'Heart Of Glass'
for Ringo, with a country and western spoof ':Life Begins At 40' and 'Nobody
Told Me' pencilled in for the drummer too). When asked once why he returned when
he did, Lennon even giggled that he's just heard Paul McCartney's most new
wave-ish single 'Coming Up' on the radio and, impressed, thought he'd better
get going too 'because Paul's writing was suddenly so good' (he added,
correctly in my view, that 'I prefer the freaky version he did in his garage to
the live one in Glasgow and I thought the record company had a nerve making him
change it!') Usually Lennon was ahead of the pack - but compared to what Macca
was doing naturally with 'Macca II' in this period and what George was doing
when pushed with 'Somewhere In England' Double Fantasy' is eons behind, not
just a five-year retirement. Just picture what this album could have been: a
record with the material of 'Milk and Honey', played with the feel of new wave
and the inventiveness of 'Coming Up' - how on earth did we end up with the
album we got?
What makes it worse in a way is that Yoko is on top
form across this album, her own 'return' to the music world after six years
away (and even then her second-best album 'A Story', recorded in 1974, wasn't
released thanks in part to her estrangement from Lennon who wasn't forcing her
records though on 'Apple' the way he once had). Some mis-guided critics then
and now have said that the only reason 'Double Fantasy' got bad reviews was
because of the decision to put John and Yoko's songs on an album together - for
the first time since 'Sometimes In New York City' in 1972. Not so: firstly one
of the few things about this album that works is its 'conversational' tone, a
'dual' take on themes that leads us to see things first from John's point of
view and then his wife's (at least it does until the curious decision to
disrupt the flow of the album by having side one ends with 'Beautiful Boy'; and
side two start with 'Watching The Wheels'). This works particularly well with
'Beautiful Boy' being answered straight away by Yoko's 'Beautiful Boys'
(comparing toddler Sean with his 40-year-old dad) and Yoko's Give Me Something'
segueing into John's pained 'I'm Losing You'. Yes the 'conversational' concept
loses its way outside these tracks but hey - 'Sgt Peppers' only stayed a
concept for three tracks! However what doesn't work is that John and Yoko's
songs now sound so alien from each other - with 'Double Fantasy' made
effectively as two different records (with Yoko working in the afternoon and
John at night; Douglas has been quite open the fact that this was because the
pair, so loving in private, tended to argue and bicker like mad when working on
their music and the idea of a truly joint effort was abandoned early on when it
was clear nothing would get done). Secondly, Yoko's songs are simply better
than her husband's. Though Lennon is languishing in middle age at forty, his wife
at forty-seven is still very much keeping up with trends and her anguished
punkish tracks are perfect for the 'new wave' acts big in 1980: the conceptual
art of 'Kiss Kiss Kiss' (in which a double-tracked Yoko orgasms in stereo), the
angry spitting safety-pinned 'Give Me Something', the accusatory 'I'm Moving
On' and the trippy 80s psychedelia of 'Every Man Has A Woman Who Loves Him' are
absolutely what contemporary acts are doing in this period - all those tough
rock chicks like Chrissie Hynde, Debbie Harry and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The
Dark who came with the same idea of 'art' and method and feistiness of Yoko.
Lennon recognised it too, hearing The B-52s on the radio in 1979 and saying to
Yoko 'listen, that's you!' (possibly looking them out after hearing that old
mate Paul Simon was raving about them having 'borrowed' them as the 'new' for
his film about washed up one-hit wonder Jonah in 1980's 'One Trick Pony'. one
of Jonah's band members, Tony Levin, plays bass on this album as it happens so
they might well have cropped up in conversation; Paul also lived in New York
City and while not a regular visitor didn't live all that far away - the). The
rest has clearly done Yoko good, giving her a chance to bottle up her feelings
about being away from music and art for so long (like Lennon she was in
hibernation and keen to bring up Sean 'properly', though she dealt with all the
'business' from an office in the Dakota building - though unlike Lennon it
wasn't through choice of leaving the music business behind) and with Lennon's
support Yoko was finally getting the due recognition she'd deserved for so long
(everybody now assumes 'Walking On Thin Ice' was a strong seller because it was
the first song released after Lennon's death - not so, everyone who'd heard the
song being worked on across Lennon's final week were adamant she was about to
get her first solo 'hit' and many young acts adored it, especially in the
'club' scene). Yoko's youthful energy makes Lennon's pipe-and-slippers all the
more apparent, though, even if it does liven up the LP considerably (the
unfortunate atrocity 'Yes I'm Your Angel' aside).
This album has troubled me for decades now, partly
because it's at such odds with the records around it and partly because
everyone else seems to wax lyrical about this album while ignoring the Lennon
albums that really deserve it ('Lennon/Plastic Ono Band' 'Walls and Bridges'
even the under-rated M'ind Games'). However I had a whole new angle to think
about when Yoko decided to remix 'Double Fantasy' for the Lennon 'Signature'
set released for what would have been John's 70th birthday on October 9th 2010
and I can't tell whether that's been good for my understanding of the album at
all. Now to be fair this new mix is brilliant - usually 'remixes' spell
disaster for AAA bands, causing fans to fork their money out for something even
monekynuts collectors like me can't see that much difference in. but this one
is positively different in every way. Much of the 1980s technology has been
taken out, bits of Lennon cut out from the final mix have been re-instated (so
we get much more of his vocals and guitar-work) and the work sounds much more
'timeless' than it did (many of the first critical notices remark just how
dated and 50s Lennon's recordings sound, in great contrast to Yoko's). Many of
the Lennonisms that were so hard to hear the first time round have been restored
and they're brilliant, from Lennon's opening evocation of all his muses, all
sadly gone by 1980 ('This one's for Gene and Eddie and Elvis...and Buddy!') to
his sly closing remarks on 'Hard Times Are Over' ('When I hold you in my
armchair...Goodbye! Heh heh heh!...All done!') that recall both his retirement
farewell on 'Just Because' and his cynical 'goodbye-ee!' on the Sgt Pepper's
reprise that says more in a second than ringmaster McCartney manages in 150. Some
songs are a true revelation: Yoko's 'Every
There's nothing here
that couldn't have been done at the time - so why not do it? (The 'remix' idea
- first practised by Kate Bush for her early 1980s monstrosities - is a
potentially great AAA series: a few other candidates that should be first in
the queue for being 'stripped down' include CSN's 'Live It Up', Paul Simon's
'Hearts and Bones', Pink Floyd's 'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason', Neil Young's
'Landing On Water' and fellow Beatle Paul's 'Press To Play' and 'George's 'Gone
Troppo'!)
The problem may have been how many youngsters Lennon
was surrounding himself with. Douglas was potentially the perfect sounding
board for the project, with a knowledge and understanding of contemporary music
and yet a genuine love and enthusiasm for Lennon's period as well (onlookers
were surprised at how well the two got on and so quickly - recalling Lennon's
friendship with Phil Spector without the shouting or guns) yet may have been
slightly too awe-struck to make Lennon go back and re-do his 'bad bits'. Record
label Geffen were then in their infancy and didn't have the same commercial
clout and mixing know-how that a bigger label would have delivered (John and
Yoko, unsure how well they would sound, made the recordings in private at
first, paying for them with their own money and offering them unheard to
different labels - Geffen won primarily because they treated John and Yoko as
equal partners). (In fact you could say that Geffen were 'cursed' by the
signing - they lost a lot of money when Lennon died and of course wasn't able
to fulfil his multi-album deal; their attempt at a big-name replacement - Neil
Young - will be similarly unhappy, ending in a notorious court case against the
guitarist for 'releasing albums that didn't sound like what people had come to
expect from Neil Young'). Lennon was notoriously shy and unsure of his own
worth, particularly as a singer but sometimes as a writer too, and seems to
have done what he told George Martin and Phil Spector but which the pair
sensibly ignored: 'make my voice more hidden! Cover me up with everything
else!' Douglas, overwhelmed to be working with a Beatle with much more
experience, seems to have largely done what he was told - much to the record's
ultimate cost. For despite my diatribe across this review there are parts of
'Double Fantasy' worth the rescue (and worth forking out for the 'Stripped
Down' version for).
'Beautiful Boy' proves that Lennon could skirt
sentiment if he chose (though so often on this record he just plunged in
head-first), demonstrating just why he chose to stay out of the musical
spotlight for so long to witness the miracle of birth and to see his boy
growing up. 'I'm Losing You' might not match past classics but it adds some
rare pain and honesty that's always welcome to hear from Lennon's mouth.
'Watching The Wheels' has an interesting concept behind it, even if it is
ultimately a very boring song. 'Woman' has a very pretty Beatley tune, even if
the words are far less inspired. Yoko's 'Kiss Kiss Kiss', 'Give Me Something'
and 'I'm Moving On' reinvent her style quite wonderfully for a new era, while
'Beautiful Boys' offers one last gorgeous 70s style prog rock lament farewell
to it. The album cover, of JohnandYoko in full embrace, is what album covers
were made for and the album title (the name was taken from a rose) is clever
and very in keeping with the great JohnandYoko tradition and the concept of
swapping stories and viewpoints back and forth, though ultimately fudged, was
very much an idea worth pursuing. I just wish that there was a bit more oomph
about this album, which manages to out-bore even 'Sometime In New York City' in
terms of theme and 'Mind Games' in terms of performance and that Lennon's
farewell message had been a properly composed goodbye musing on Lennon's usual
themes of life, love and death rather than a hastily scribbled note penned
between the shopping lists and fleshed out to record-size. Had Lennon lived and
had his career gone the way of the darker yet sparkier 'Milk and Honey',
perhaps returning to the darker demos of 1978 for a third comeback record,
'Double Fantasy; would have been forgotten, dismissed as a curio back in the
days when Lennon hadn't quite woken up from his five year slumber yet. No
doubt, knowing this site, this review would have been full of reasons why it
deserves a second shot and isn't quite the 'failure' everyone thinks it is. But
of course nobody thinks of this album as a failure - people think of it as an
amazing success story, one that was loved and treasured from the moment of
release and features Lennon at his best, to the point where no best-ofs are
complete without all of Lennon's songs from this album and curious Beatle
newcomers don't bother getting to know much else because they're so badly put
off by how sterile and false everything from this record seems. Only a tragedy
the scale of Lennon's death could disguise what an awful mess most of this
album is by his own high standards - and how much we owe it to Lennon's legacy
to stop talking this album up and instead explore his lesser known, forgotten
works before they disappear from view.
'(Just Like) Startin' Over' sums up the album nicely
- it's blandly pleasant and at the time of release as the first single from the
album was greeted with shock by fans who were alarmed at just how...cosy Lennon
sounded. The song flopped badly on first release and had disappeared from the
charts a week before Lennon died - only to hold the number one slot for three
of the four weeks after his death (when it lagged behind Bryan Ferry's Lennon tribute
'Jealous Guy'). With any other artist this phrase would be a compliment, but given
the history between them it's actually an insult to call this Lennon's most
'McCartney-ish' single. It's all too obviously crafted, slot A fits a little
too snugly into slot B and you can almost hear Lennon going 'what would make a
good comeback single? I know - a song full of a metaphor about taking the
missus out on the town like the old days'. What's odd is that while the end
product sounds totally self-contained and crafted, it was actually written out
using the 'old fashioned' Lennon method of being pieced together from lots of
different songs that stretched back over several months (possibly back to that
Bermuda trip). Several demos exist on bootleg and were broadcast on the 'Lost
Lennon Tapes' radio series under the names 'Crazy' and 'The Worst Is Over Now',
which is actually a much better song, about recovering from years of knockbacks
to live the comfortable peaceful contented existence a younger Lennon could
only dream of. There is, then, a real heart beating within this song but it's
hard to find it what with an anti-septic pop backing that recalls the 'Rock and
Roll' album's lifeless attempt at turning the clock back to the 1950s and
throwing the magic out with the rough edges. Lennon's vocal is weedy (the one
time he badly needs to double-track his vocal he doesn't!), the backing singers
turn the whole thing into an unfortunate clod-hopping gospel and though the
song seems to be leading up to a magic solo where it all comes together the
backing band never get to do anything more than just plod along. More
convincing is the opening tinkle of a wind chime - mimicking the beginning of
Lennon's 'last' career in 1970 (the funeral bells that introduced 'Mother') and
replacing that anger and desperation with a sound of joy and love which is all
very Lennon. Unfortunately though the song isn't: 'Startin Over' has little in
common with the Lennon that came before and all sounds woefully middle-aged
with the roar against injustice, greed and suffering replaced by a ditsy lyric
about taking a break from not doing much anyway. Lennon tells us that 'we have
grown' to this point, but doesn't sound that convinced of the fact himself. The
'Stripped Down' version is better, thanks to a lovely opening invocating all of
Lennon's old influences, a louder Hugh McCracken guitar part and the absence of
that awful choir - but it still sounds lightweight by his old standards.
'Kiss Kiss Kiss' is much more like it, Yoko
instantly summing up the sound of 1980 in the same way she effortlessly tapped
into the sound of 1974 the last time around on 'A Story'. Though Yoko too sings
about comfort in middle age and of the fact she now effectively has kisses on
tap, she reminds us that it wasn't always like this, adding in an angry middle
eight ('Why me why you? Broken mirror white terror!') like she's turned into
Debbie Harry on acid and perhaps referring to the use of 'bells' in her
husband's art by telling us that she's driven on 'by the sound of that
childhood bell ringing in my soul'. Primal scream therapy clearly didn't bring
closure to Yoko's demons the way they did her husband's and we'll get a lot
more of this sort of thing on her next solo album, the heartbroken 'Season Of
Glass' in 1981. However the mpost thrilling moment - and one that even
contemporary acts would have thought hard about including - is the extraordinary
middle eight where Yoko drops all pretence about love being reduced to kissing and
instead comes to orgasm twice over in stereo over the song's insistent angry
beat. Yoko, notoriously shy despite how she seemed in public, found she
couldn't record this at first so instead sent all the engineers and musicians
out of the room, turned the lights down low and 'faked' her climax twice over,
in the name of art. It's the one truly memorable passage of the entire album,
Yoko dropping her guard to prove just how much those kisses mean to her and how
far she's come to get to the point where she feels 'safe' enough to do this
sort of thing for her art. This all returns to an old Yoko classic theme - her
sense of reserve and the sea of emotions bubbling below the surface she can't
bring herself to demonstrate openly and it's well arranged this song, with Andy
Newmarks' pounding drums and Hugh McCracken's powerful guitarwork recalling the
best of 'Approximately Infinite Universe' and hinting at the sea of emotions
below the surface, contained by Yoko's prim and proper vocals, broken only by
her 'little girl' voice overdubbed on top.
'Clean Up Time' is a surprisingly ugly song for such
a 'clean' song. Lennon was inspired to write the song after his first meeting
with Jack Douglas where the pair were discussing the changes to the music scene
since Lennon's retirement in 1975. Then the music scene, Lennon's especially,
had been full of hard drugs and booze and yet by 1980 the new guard had moved
on to a cleaner way of living and the old guard were either changing their ways
or dying off. 'Well, it's cleanup time at last I guess!' Jack shrugged, leading
Lennon to laugh in reply 'it sure is' - John's sub-conscious having been opening
by all his recent songwriting the phrase stuck with him all day and had become
a song by the end of the night. Unfortunately it's not one of his better ideas
- while the idea of 'cleaning up' is a good one, allowing a former addict to
reflect on the better space his head is in these days (Lennon was something of
a health addict during his house-husband years, turning to brown macrobiotic
rice and refusing all alcohol and most drugs - despite what you may have read
in Albert Goldman's rather alarming series of Lennon books) Lennon wastes the
opportunity by turning this into another rather McCartney-ish song about a
fictional contented couple. The lyrics recall 'Cry Baby Cry' with their tale of
the King and Queen but this time round the couple are clearly John and Yoko
themselves, the Queen 'in the counting house, counting out her money' while the
King is 'in the kitchen, making bread and honey'. There's no sense anywhere,
though, that this song has come to any conclusions and the lyrics offer no
reason for the change - just a description of how peaceful Lennon's current
life is. A middle eight adds some belated tension with a scary horror-movie
style chord step that causes Lennon to half-yell 'Weeeeeeeeeeell' just like the
bad ol' days, but this just ends up becoming another strutting solo part for
the clinical saxophones to parp through. The melody too is awful, the musical
equivalent of a heavy robot trying to make its way downstairs, clunking where
it should soar and stuck in rut rather than sounding 'free' as the lyrics spend
so much time promising. The 'Stripped Down' version again improves the song by
placing Lennon up front in the mix so you can actually hear him and taking away
much of the extraneous noise so that only a twin guitar part and a drum thump
can be heard and Lennon's vocal is a delight when you can hear it properly,
full of gasp and shrieks and some very Lennonisms (that spoken word intro we
never used to be able to hear turns out to be 'hubble bubble, toil no trouble'
and Lennon ad libs 'it's Christmas time, yes it's that time of year again...'
during the fadeout.
Yoko's 'Give Me Something' rips that image of a
contented life to shreds. 'The food is cold, your eyes are cold, the window's
cold, the bed's cold!' she snaps, clearly at her husband, pleading 'give me
something that's not cold, come on come on!' as if she's preparing to walk out
there and then. Taking a leaf from Lennon's song 'Scared' she goes through it
all again, replacing the word 'cold' with the word 'hard'. Throughout the
song's angular stabs twist this way and that, as if trying to get comfy, but
the 'living's hard' and Yoko's at the end of her tether. 'Give me give me give
me!' she demands by the end, while a second Yoko in the distance retches to
show her distaste. However contented Lennon really was (and the 1978 demos
suggest he wasn't as contented as all that), Yoko clearly wasn't and her
unveiling of what sounds like the 'real' truth of the pair's years in private -
on the day she wrote the song at least - is a real punch to the stomach with a
pair of doc martins, with all the more impact given that this album spends much
of its time so comfortable in slippers. A terrific Hugh McCracken guitar solo
recalls Wayne Gabriel's sterling work on 'Approximately Infinite Universe' and
is a sound that could cut bread, mimicking the rising bile in Yoko's throat as she
tries hard to suppress her desperation at getting something, anything back from
her husband. The song has nowhere to go after 90 seconds so instead of just
repeating everything again Yoko sensibly brings the song to as weary halt. Underlining
that this relationship is now a one-way street she quietly announces that 'I'll
give you my heartbeat, a little tear and flesh' telling Lennon that while it's
not much 'you can have it, you can have it!' while icy chords sound like a door
is being slammed right in his face. You wonder what Lennon made of such an
honest and open song, especially at a time when he himself was covering up his
own honesty so much. It's another of the album's highlights, full of more than
enough energy and emotion for the two of them.
The song may also have inspired Lennon's best song
on the album in response. 'I'm Losing You' is a brief return to if not the
'Plastic Ono Band' days of bitterness then certainly 'Walls and Bridges' sense
of desperation and turmoil. This song is one of the earliest on the album,
written on holiday in Bermuda when Lennon tried to call up Yoko back home and
discovered to his horror that he couldn't get through (notorious for its stormy
weather, the island may simply not have had a good enough reception or one of
the phone wires may have been broken). The incident reminded him of his 'lost
weekend' phases when he spent hours staring at the telephone ringing Yoko to
ring him and inspired what at last is a genuinely inspired song from Lennon who
uses the metaphor for not being able to communicate with his wife in a wider
sense. 'You say you're not getting enough' he sighs, recalling Yoko's
complaints from the last song, but doesn't know how to put things right. 'What
the hell am I supposed to do?' he demands, 'just put a band-aid on it?' The
wounds from 1972 (when JohnandYoko went to a party, with John leaving his wife
downstairs while he had sex with a guest upstairs and left Yoko feeling taken
for granted, one of the triggers for the 'lost weekend') has been forgiven but
not forgotten, a desperate Lennon telling his wife 'I know I hurt you then -
but hell that was way back when and do you still have to carry that cross?' Eventually
losing his eruditeness John takes on Yoko at her own game, demanding that she
'drop it!' to a heavy, crunching guitar riff, but like 'Jealous Guy' he knows
he's the one at fault and cannot work out a way to put things right. Lennon
ends up simply feeling sorry for himself, singing the chorus from the skiffle
track 'Long Lost John' over the fadeout in lonely despair (a busked version of
the whole song from the 'Plastic Ono band' sessions later appeared on the
'Lennon Anthology' box set). The climax of the song comes a little before that,
though, with a terrifying chord sequence where two Lennons chase themselves
over and over across a descending set of chords grimly trying to hold on from a
great height, as if John is chasing Yoko to their mutual doom. It's Lennon's
one 'real' moment on the album and he's more than up for it, turning in a
terrific vocal (even if again the mix makes it hard to hear), making you regret
all the more how far he's fallen across the rest of the album. There are in
fact four very different versions of this song around, all of which sound
great.The 'Stripped Down' version makes a great song even better, putting
Lennon's guilt right under a spotlight and taking all the effects away,
although a better version yet appeared on the 'Anthology' box set when after
Douglas' urging Lennon was backed by Cheap Trick for one song only. A third version
- a piano ballad titled 'Stranger's Room' also released on 'Anthology' - is
pretty special too even if Lennon hasn't come up with a 'proper' ending yet.
It's an even more powerful performance and one that both Yoko and Douglas
pleaded with him to use - Lennon, though, preferred the slightly less unhinged
quality of this track.
Yoko replies immediately with 'I'm Moving On', a
hurt ballad revved up to being another rocker which sounds very much like her
'hurt' songs from the 'Universe' and 'Feeling The Space' period. 'Save your
kisses' she demands, contradicting her earlier song, 'You know you scarred me
for life!' Yoko, authentic to the last, threatens to move away for good this
time if Lennon doesn't change her ways, telling Lennon what must have hurt him
the most to hear - that after years of being the most 'real' pair in rock
'you're getting phoney'. Yoko reflects sadly on how she always used to know how
her husband was feeling, how the emotion was always there in his voice and his
eyes, but now all she gets is his fake 'window smile' and that's not good
enough for here -she wants 'the truth and nothing more', however ugly or dark
that might be. Pushed to more great heights Yoko is inspired to bring back her
old-style squealing one last time as two of her hold on to her final note ('I'm
moving ooooooooooooon!') for what seems like an eternity before she mad anger
dies out and leaves her making her mouth noises (last heard on 'Fly' in 1971)
to bring the song to a collapsing close. It's another powerful moment that
takes you by surprise, with Yoko once again trumping John's material and
differing from her husband by expressing her independence and that unlike
Lennon she can exist outside the JohnandYoko story. For once the 'Stripped
Down' version doesn't improve the song and simply messes around with the elements
that made up the song - Yoko's emotion already came though the finished product
loud and clear no matter what the slick production had to had. Sadly a reported
outtake with 'Cheap Trick' recorded the same day they did 'I', Losing You',
remains in the vault even though Yoko considered this too to be the better
version.
The one moment of cosiness on 'Double Fantasy' that
sounds sincere is Lennon's haunting 'Beautiful Boy'. Written for Sean somewhere
around his fourth birthday in October 1979, it's a lovely song that subverts
Lennon's usual mantra to the world that 'it's gonna be alright!' to his own
son. John sounds protective, adding that the 'monster's gone' and that in
absentia (was this song finished off in Bermuda?) his love is all the stronger.
Wondering on how much he's missed out during a week away from home, Lennon grows
impatient to see everything of his son growing up - 'I can hardly to wait to
see you come of age' he sighs, 'but I guess we'll both just have to be
patient'. Lennon also comes up with his single best line on the album: 'Life is
what happens to you while you're busy making other plans'. It's meant as a bit
of advice from father to son, but as ever with Lennon it works equally well in
the universal sense as the personal. I'm less keen on the melody, which uses a
calypso reggae feel (that settles it - this was almost definitely written in
Bermuda!) and settles into a slow-burning groove early on and stays there, but
even that suits the overall cosiness of this song, with Lennon's twinkling
vocal delivering just the right amount of pathos. I still prefer the demo, though,
with Lennon using his guitar to tell the story instead of an entire steel band
- this is one of those intimate songs that sounds all the better for being
sparse (there's one on 'Anthology' although there's an even better and even
sparser version out on bootleg). Of all the songs to play back after Lennon's death
this is the hardest to listen to, with Lennon desperate to skip forward in time
to see Sean turn eighteen (which he did in 2003) with us knowing well that he
won't be there to see it first-hand. What a tragedy that, after vowing to take
parenting seriously the second time around (poor Julian, born in 1963, barely
saw his busy Beatle dad) and vowing to be there forever that turned out not to
be true for a reason out of Lennon's hands. 'Goodnight' Lennon whispers 'See
you in the morning' as if he's just been singing this performance directly to
his sleeping son, not realising how few mornings were still left. The song was always one of the better loved on
the album the 'first' time round anyway but had grown in stature ever since and
is many fans' favourite Lennon song (not least Paul McCartney's, who chose this
song as his 'desert island disc' favourite in 1982, the only Beatle-related
choice of his eight). The 'Stripped Down' version doesn't add a lot more, but
Lennon's clearer vocal is even more of a delight. 'Beautiful Boy' may not sound
much like the rest of Lennon's oeuvre, it may lack the distinctiveness and
courage of his best work, but it's the one song here that demonstrates that
this easier more comfortable way of life was good for the art as well as the
soul.
'Watching The Wheels' starts side two in defensive
mood. Lennon addresses the 'missing' five year period head on, remembering the
'advice' that 'friends' like Paul and Mick Jagger were giving him in absence to
come out of retirement and recalls how he was called both 'lazy' and 'crazy' by
peers who couldn't understand why anyone would turn their back on such a
career. So far so good - but rather than answer with what Lennon has really
been doing (Watching his boy grow up! Rooting himself in the 'real' world!
Having fun fort himself after a lifetime of providing entertainment for other
people!') Lennon just grumpily tells us that he's been 'watching the wheels go
round and round'. The lyric has its moments ('There are no problems - only
solutions' is a very Lennonish quote that would have gone well with 'Whatever
Gets You Thru The Night') but not enough of them - for the most part this is a
boring song and it's a song that can't afford to be boring: it's the long awaited
continuation of a lifelong conversation between artist and fan that JohnandYoko
had spent their careers having and, well, it's forgettable. Welcome as it is to
hear that Lennon jumped off the merry-go-und that was causing him pain, why
didn't he do a better job of telling us how much better his new life is? Someone
like Ray Davies would have made this song about returning to the simple things
in life after a year of being the centre of attention the most moving thing on
the record - Lennon sounds as if he's reading a shopping list, with what must
surely be his most forgettable melody in years. The 'Stripped Down' version is
funkier, but it can only improve the performance not the song. Oddly, 'Wheels'
was another song Lennon worked on for years (it may well have been his first
written in his house-husband days) but earlier versions of the song are far
more interesting: the travelogue 'Tennessee' and especially the 'In My Life'
style 'Memories'. Even on an album of lost opportunities this is the one that
got away.
However Lennon is saved the ignominy of having the
worst song on the album thanks to Yoko's excruciating roaring twenties spoof
'Yes I'm Your Angel'. Effectively a copycat version of 'Makin' Whoopee' without
the wit or even the rhyming structure (the whole point of the original song),
Yoko was even sued by Gus Kahn's publishers - they seemed to have a strong case
but to their credit weren't mean enough to pursue it after Lennon's death and
quietly dropped it altogether by 1981. This really is the worst of Yoko all in
one song - heer trite 'little girl persona' is her less flattering 'character',
her vocal is shrill and annoying and she hits every note flat, destroying a
genre without ever showing any signs of understanding what made it work (to be
fair even someone who does know how these songs work - Paul McCartney - can't
write these sort of songs either, with 'You Gave Me The Answer' and 'Honey Pie'
only slight less excruciating than this). The song starts with some confusing
sound effects which according to Lennon's comments in period interviews
represented him going for a walk through a time tunnel that opened up and
finding himself meeting Yoko in a previous life performing in a New York
nightclub, wolf-whistling along to her performance. You wish that he'd met any
of Yoko's other past lives instead - she was almost certainly Boadicea and Yoko
herself believed the pair to be the reincarnations of Elizabethan poets Robert
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (there's more of this on 'Milk and Honey' by the
way...) - but this past life is just awful. The 'Stripped Down' versions adds
more Lennon, which is welcome, but also more Ono, which isn't.
'Woman' was another big hit for Lennon and his first
posthumous single where it reached number one in early 1981 (it could hardly
sell any less really could it?) Lennon apparently always intended this song as
the second single from the album - possibly after rush-releasing 'Walking On
Thin Ice' - and you could see why as it's another oddly McCartney-like
structured pop song with a hummable chord sequence and lyrics that won't shock
the neighbours. In one sense it's a breakthrough song for Lennon, who had spent
so many years pushing for the feminist unit and attacking male chauvinism
(including his own) now simply turning to how wonderful women can be. He
admitted that he was thinking of his mother Julia and even his aunt Mimi and
Astrid Kirchher as much as Yoko in this song by the way - though his dedication
'to the other half of the sky' is taken directly from Yoko's book of sayings
'Grapefruit'. However, nice though the song is, there's something awfully false
about it all. McCartney can get away with this sort of thing (his track 'My
Love' is very similar) because we know that this is how his brain 'works' - that's
he's as liable to consider audience and appeal and think in terms of symmetry
and neatness when he's writing as much as the genuine emotion that inspired the
song. Lennon's brain, though, isn't traditionally that tidy - it's through the
rough edges, frayed endings and asymmetry where Lennon's true self always
lurks. 'Woman' is one of Lennon's few songs where none of that 'real'ness is on
display and so for all it's good points 'Woman' just ends up being another pop
song of the sort the older more bitter Lennon would himself have been sneering
at (he hated 'My Love' for instance!) Lennon's attempts to 'breath-in' during
the chorus (recalling The Beatles' 'Girl') and the Buddy Holly-style hiccup
ought to be clever - but in this context they just make this overtly pop and
popular song all the more artificial and false. The 'Stripped Down' version is
a major improvement though, adding Lennon's warm voice rather than keeping him
at a distance which makes a lot more sense of the song.
Yoko's tribute 'Beautiful Boys' really belongs back
with 'Beautiful Boy' as it's less about mankind than about the pair she knows
well. Yoko's ambiguous lyric is clever, leaving us unsure if she's singing
about husband or son (Lennon liked his 'toys' too!) and her lyric shows that
she 'gets' John in a way far deeper than he seems to 'get' her. 'You got all
you can carry yet somehow feels kind of empty' is her best line on the album,
summing up what's taken Lennon a career to realise. 'Never be afraid to cry' is
her motherly advice to son Sean, whose already learning the 'grown up' way of
using reserve and talking for his feelings, while her advice to her husband is
closer to home with what she's been seeing across this album: 'Never be afraid
to fly'. Noticing her husband's new found love of travelling after his 'green
card' (why the hell was it actually blue?!) came through Yoko encourages him to
see the world after a lifetime of 'going to hell and back' but warns him that
seeing the world won't help him see himself ('You can go from pole to pole and
never scratch your soul'). As George Harrison would have told him 'inner space
is the answer - not outer space'. A lovely melody does much to add meaning to
this song, especially oddly enough the much more 80s production on 'Stripped
Down', full of maternal pride mixed with worry and concern. It's another album
highlight and is the one song on the album that seems to come with the feeling
of 'ominous alarm' that will appear on pretty much all of Yoko's recording for
the rest of the decade. Hugh McCracken's flamenco guitar flourishes shouldn't
fit this decidedly un-demonstrative song and yet they sound perfect - Yoko
really had a way of getting the best out of her guitarists!
John signs off with the last song released on his lifetime
the charming but slight 'Dear Yoko', a lazy re-write of his earlier
not-that-strong 'Oh Yoko' from 1971. A Buddy Holly style 50s backing track is
cute enough and Lennon's vocal is a delight as he spits out a quick-stepping
lyric about how much his wife means to him. It's a delight to hear Lennon so
happy that he turns the line 'never ever ever gonna let you go' into poetry and
there's a gorgeous middle eight, that slides in from nowhere and takes us by
surprise with the sheer power of Lennon's feelings. However even by 'Double
Fantasy' standards it's all rather twee - the younger Lennon would never have
written a lyric like 'the Gods have really smiled upon out love, Dear Yoko' and
it's exactly the sort of lazy writing John would have condemned in his Beatle
colleagues. Once again the 'Stripped Down' version is better, injecting more
life into the song underneath all the honking harmonicas (sadly none of them
played by Lennon, one of the greatest players of the instrument!) but the
really good versions of this song are all on bootlegs, the simple two chord
strumming bringing out much of the 'realness' on this song than any amount of
production overdubs. In case you were wondering the 'don't sell a cow' speech
heard over the fade is an 'in-joke' discussed by Lennon in what turned out to
be his last interview for Playboy Magazine: one of the weirder aspects of the
Lennon business empire was investing in dairy farms (though less hands on than
McCartney). John had taken Sean out for another holiday and was hoping Yoko
would fly out to join them - but she wanted to see that a transaction over a
rare breed took place before she flew out and the bargaining ended up dragging
on for days (Yoko eventually sold it for $60,000 - Lennon's comment being 'only
Yoko could sell a cow for that much!') That's why Lennon ad libs 'next time you
come over don't sell a cow - come over and spend some time with the kids...'
Yoko's 'Every Man Has A Woman Who Loves Him' used to
be another of my least favourite tracks on the record. It's the first of only
two occasions where John and Yoko sing together and you can tell why they don't
do more of this across the album - both are terrible flat straining to stay in
tune with the other and the very 1980 production of lots of criss-crossing
guitars and the cold alien synth landscape is distinctly unappetising. This is
made worse by the decision to release a remixed version of this song without
Yoko's voice as a now hard-to-find single: Lennon's vocal, only ever meant as a
harmony part, is his worst on record when heard as a 'lead' part even if his
voice really suits the song's sense of desperation and longing. The 'Stripped
Down' version is a revelation, however, turning the song into a slow-burning
ballad that's a lament for everyone whose ever struggled to find their life
partner. The fact that Yoko is about to lose hers makes this track incredibly
powerful and hints that she too shared Lennon's inability to commit and settle
down: 'Why do I roam when I know you're the one? Why do I laugh when I feel
like crying?' The theme that every single person has a soulmate but that they
come at a cost is a very Yoko image and the idea that everyone can tell simply
by listening to their heartbeat or staring into their eyes could have come
straight out of 'Grapefruit'. Hearing Lennon intone the line 'in rain or shine'
(recalling his lyric for Beatles B-side 'Rain') and 'in life and death' like
the grim reaper is a very eerie moment in either version, however.
Thankfully the album ends not there but on the weary
upbeat of Yoko's 'Hard Times Are Over'. Summing up the difficult path both John
and Yoko have trodden since they first stepped down their mutual road, Yoko
recalls her own 'Waiting For The Sunrise' from 1972 by picturing the sun coming
out after a storm. Musically it's the one song of Yoko's on the album that
looks back and could have come from her earlier Apple career, with a slight
country and western saloon-bar feel. Thankfully it's more like her inspired
'Universe' work than her lesser 'Feeling The Space' era. Like Lennon she's
contented and at peace, but unlike many of her husband's songs on this album she
makes it clear that it's the sort of unwinding that comes after a hard-fought
for day in a hot bath - the couple deserve this rest because they've been
nearly broken by what life has to throw at them. Lennon's harmony vocal, sadly
ducked in the album mix, is much louder on the superior 'Stripped Down' version
and turns this song of solidarity into an anthem for JohnandYoko both as they
celebrate how 'hard times are over - for a while'. Tragically those hard times
are about to begin again a mere three weeks after people first got to hear this
track, turning what should have been a rousing album finale into a track now
laced with irony and hidden messages, ending with the couple too busy staring
into each other's eyes in love as they walk round a street corner into...well
we never find out on record because the album ends then but in retrospect it
sounds awfully as if John and Yoko know they're walking into tragedy without
knowing it (Lennon reportedly spoke often during the sessions that he would die
soon and apparently feared entering his 40s from his childhood days - was he
told this by the 'fortune teller' - see the 'Haunted Liverpool' series - who
told him and his three friends in 1956 at Allerton Park 'whoever catches this ball
will have unimaginable riches and influence and success - but it will come at a
price'; only Lennon was brave enough to catch the ball? Douglas has since said
many times in interviews that his last conversation with Lennon - actually
taped in the studio - was about his fear of death, but that he ordered the tape
be taken out and burnt when he learnt of the tragedy).
Overall, though, what's perhaps odd about 'Double
Fantasy' is that it doesn't sound like the sort of album release by someone
fearing death or the last will and testament by someone who knows he's pushing
his luck. Had any other Lennon come last - the honest confessional of 'Plastic
Ono Band', the half-confessional of 'Imagine', the Nixon-baiting of 'Sometime
In New York City', the sadness and guilt of 'Mind Games' or the confusion of 'Walls
and Bridges' - it would have made retrospective 'sense'. Lennon spends most of
those albums looking over his shoulder, worried about how much time he has -
the tragedy is that only Yoko has that sense of impending doom across 'Double
Fantasy' - John has never sounded more contented, more at peace or more willing
to demonstrate that he's in life for the long run, taking care of himself and
his family. No wonder, then, that the contented and peaceful 'Double Fantasy'
became such a magnet for fans after Lennon's death, representing as it does the
happier side of his art and fuelling people's anger that Lennon got taken away
right when he was needed by his young family the most. The tragic circumstances
of Lennon's death would have transformed any album into a million seller, even
'New York City' or 'Two Virgins' - 'Double Fantasy' was destined to become
Lennon's biggest seller before he'd even died. But in truth it's a rotten
record by his standards, weedy and calculating and often boring - the three
charges you could never lay at Lennon's door at any other period - and it's not
the way I want to remember him. Had Lennon lived there'd hopefully be so many
fantastic albums in his catalogue (starting with the half-finished 'Milk and
Honey') that this album would have been forgotten and over-shadowed, written
off as Lennon struggling to get back in the groove. Instead my heart sinks
every time I hear 'Watching The Wheels' or 'Woman' or 'Startin' Over' played on
the radio and billed as 'classic Lennon'. This isn't classic Lennon in any way
shape or form and the worst possible point for us to say goodbye, before Lennon
had a chance to prove to us just how creative and how relevant he still was to
his era and how much he still had to offer the world. Instead Lennon became a
martyr in death, the last thing he'd ever have wanted, and the fact that so
many of his lesser songs are now hailed as classics would have angered him as
much as fans like me.
A NOW COMPLETE LIST
OF LENNON ARTICLES TO READ AT ALAN’S ALBUM ARCHIVES:
'Lennon/Plastic Ono Band' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-43-john-lennonplastic-ono-band.html
'Imagine' (1971) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/john-lennon-imagine-1971-album-review.html
'Sometime In New York City' (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/news-views-and-music-issue-35-john.html
'Mind Games'(1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/news-views-and-music-issue-77-john.html
'Walls and Bridges' (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-63-john-lennon-walls-and-bridges.html
'Sometime In New York City' (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/news-views-and-music-issue-35-john.html
'Mind Games'(1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/news-views-and-music-issue-77-john.html
'Walls and Bridges' (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-63-john-lennon-walls-and-bridges.html
'Double Fantasy' (1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/john-lennon-and-yoko-ono-double-fantasy.html
'Milk and Honey' (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/news-views-and-music-issue-135-john.html
'Milk and Honey' (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/news-views-and-music-issue-135-john.html
Non-Album Recordings
1969-1980 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/john-lennon-and-yoko-ono-non-album.html
Live/Compilation/Unfinished
Music Albums 1968-2010 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/john-lennon-livecompilationraritiesunfi.html
The Best Unreleased Lennon
Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/john-lennon-best-unreleased-recordings.html
Surviving TV Clips
1968-1980 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/john-lennon-surviving-tv-clips-1968-1980.html
Essay: Power To The Beatle – Why Lennon’s Authenticity Was So Special https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/john-lennon-essay-power-to-beatle-why.html
Landmark concerts and key cover versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/04/john-lennon-five-landmark-concerts-and.html
Essay: Power To The Beatle – Why Lennon’s Authenticity Was So Special https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/john-lennon-essay-power-to-beatle-why.html
Landmark concerts and key cover versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/04/john-lennon-five-landmark-concerts-and.html
