Double Fantasy

Like the day that John F. Kennedy was shot, or when Man first walked on the moon, many people remember the day that John Lennon died with astonishing clarity. I do, as well.

I had offered to assist an American film-maker, Ray, with some time-lapse photography of Sydney's city skyline, which he was going to use to end the documentary he'd shot in Australia...as the sun went down on our December Summer's night.

So, as we were working, shooting 1 frame (1/24th of a second of finished film) every minute on a building top in Kings Cross, the red light district of the city. Looking out at the skyscrapers, we started hearing Lennon and Beatles music coming from what seemed like hundreds of households and as the sun went down, Ray and I knew what had happened, without having to see the news.

 John Lennon & Yoko Ono: Double Fantasy 

And so to Double Fantasy with the first single, Just Like Starting Over. 

"Hmm. Retro, very 50s, hardly relevant to what was happening still it's so nice to hear Lennon again...and he sounds...good..."....is what I thought...but it was just so good to hear Lennon again. Boy, I'd missed him! Of course, when the album came out, things were different. There were 2 very good tracks, Woman...

There were also three pretty good Lennon tracks, Starting Over, Watching the Wheels, & Beautiful Boy...

John Lennon: Real Love, drawings for his young son, Sean 

"...The drawings are adorable and colorful. The captions are cute and funny. My daughter loves looking at each page. It's really worth buying..." Amazon reviewer LJskyora02

.... and two pretty ordinary tracks, Clean Up Time & Dear Yoko.

Oh, I almost forgot, there were six awful tracks from Yoko. O.K., make that five, Kiss, Kiss, Kiss was tolerable.

In other words, Double Fantasy was almost half a decent album and Yoko Ono was, most definitely a goose! Goodness me, she was by then in her early 40s...and she was still carrying on like an idiot! She couldn't sing...she certainly couldn't write songs...

...And then Lennon was shot. Suddenly Lennon's good set of songs became elevated to "remarkable" because we couldn't believe some nutter had shot...a genius. The Double Fantasy Lennon tracks were played relentlessly and Beatle John was finally canonised...with Yoko getting some kind of bizarre sympathy vote as being listenable.

That was then, when the world was in a state of shock. These days I think most people would agree with my assessment, Lennon's good...but could be even better....and Yoko's crap! The tragedy is that Fred Seaman (see Lennon books), his personal assistant of two years felt the real Lennon was just beginning to emerge...and that some great music was coming.

  John Lennon & Yoko Ono: Double Fantasy 

N.B. The Remastered edition of Double Fantasy now includes Yoko's best-ever rock song, Walking On Thin Ice, the track that the Lennon's were working on the day he was killed, see Posthumous releases

Lennon's last interview

"...The most valuable part of this book, in which John systematically goes through almost every Beatles and solo Lennon song, is a concession John granted after blowing Playboy's scoop by giving an interview to Newsweek magazine. We get John's feelings about each of the songs as well as the memories triggered by them, what was going on in that period of his life and how they were written.

Though John continues with the superficial model of 'John songs' and 'Paul songs', we see that the truth is more complicated, they wrote the best of the Beatles 'one-on-one, eyeball to eyeball... both playing into each other's noses'..." Amazon reviewer My Uncle Stu

For more info, see:

• John Lennon Books
• wikipedia Double Fantasy
• posthumous releases
• English comedy about John living at the Dakota and getting fed up with Yoko's cooking