Authors: Ken Bielen Ben Urich
good bonus cuts on future reissues. As it was, several of the variants from
this version of the
Rarities
album found their way into the Beatles’
Anthology
collections.
double FantaSy: a heart Play
In the summer of 1980, Lennon sailed with a small crew from New-
port, Rhode Island, to Bermuda. The island proved to be fertile ground for
Lennon’s creativity. He finished composing a slew of songs, several he had
been working on sporadically for years, and was motivated to record again.
Upon returning to New York, Lennon and Ono booked time during August
and September at The Hit Factory recording studio in Manhattan and began
laying down tracks. The couple gathered a group of veteran studio musicians,
including guitarist Hugh McCracken (who had played on Paul McCartney’s
Ram
album); drummer Andy Newmark; and guitarist Earl Slick, who par-
ticipated in the Lennon–David Bowie “Fame” sessions five years earlier. Jack
Douglas, who achieved great success producing Aerosmith and Cheap Trick
in the 1970s, was called in to co-produce with Lennon and Ono. Years earlier,
Douglas had been an assistant engineer for the
Imagine
sessions.
Despite the insecurities associated with not being in the studio for almost
half a decade, the recorded results have a relaxed feel, in part because Lennon
was not under contract to any record company. At the time, media mogul
David Geffen was starting up a new label, Geffen Records. Geffen had already
lured Elton John from MCA and former disco diva Donna Summer from the
Casablanca label. The Lennons would prove the hat trick. Geffen sold the
Lennons on his label because of its small, intimate environment and, more
convincingly, because he did not ask to hear the new product before signing
them. He also had the savvy to approach Yoko Ono.6 The couple signed with
Cleanup Time, 1975–1980 75
Geffen in late September, paving the way for John Lennon’s first release of
newly composed material in six years.
The album was
Double Fantasy.
The title has several meanings. The Double
Fantasy is a flower that was blooming in Bermuda during Lennon’s visit in
July 1980. The title also refers to the close working and intimate relation-
ship between Lennon and Ono. Kishin Shinoyama’s black-and-white head-
shot cover photo of the Lennons in the midst of an eyes-closed, gentle kiss
underscores the duo’s relationship. The photo also references the interior
cover photo of the couple’s
Wedding Album,
issued 11 years earlier, which
displayed a black-and-white photo of the couple caught up in a kiss.
The title also relates to the concept and sequencing of the album, which is
a dialogue between two equal artists. The final product is generally sequenced
to alternate between tracks composed and sung by Lennon with those com-
posed and sung by Ono. The dialogue aspect is most evident in the tracks
“I’m Losing You” and “I’m Moving On,” which are discussed in more detail
below.
The album begins simply with the gentle hitting of a bell in the first mea-
sures of “(Just Like) Starting Over.” Lennon talk-sings the introduction at
a slow tempo in his trademark ballad voice, making it into a recitative song
opening, a technique he used for “Listen,” “Bad to Me,” and “If I Fell” 17
years earlier. The recording picks up its tempo and morphs into a mid-tempo
rock song that vocally conjures up 1950s rock singers Eddie Cochran, Gene
Vincent, and Buddy Holly and adds a touch of 1960s girl-group singers in the
background vocals. Lennon jokingly named his vocalizing style here as that of
“Elvis Orbison.”7 With echo added to his vocal, Lennon brings up the vocal
styling of his youth. Whereas the lyrics are overtly about a renewed love (“we
both are falling in love again”), the song is also the duo’s pronouncement
that Lennon and his music were back.
“(Just Like) Starting Over” was the first single released from
Double Fantasy.
The recording was number one on the
Billboard
charts for five weeks, but
not until after his murder. Lennon appears to have always been enamored of
song titles that included parenthetical phrases going back to the rhythm and
blues and soul songs of the early 1960s, and they flood his entire catalog.
With The Beatles, he had composed many songs with such titles, including
“Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),”
and “You Know My Name (Look Up My Number).” His post-Beatles work
included “Bring on the Lucie (Freda People),” “I Know (I Know),” “Instant
Karma! (We All Shine On),” and several others. He did it again with this
track, except that the parenthetical aspect came first this time.
As noted earlier, the album alternates between Lennon tracks and Ono
tracks. The first Ono effort on the album is “Kiss Kiss Kiss.” The music track
has elements of the punk rock aesthetic with martial drum rolls added. The
recording reveals the influences that Ono’s earlier work had on the music
and vocal styling of Blondie, The Slits, Nina Hagen, the B-52s, and other
76 The Words and Music of John Lennon
punk and new wave outfits of the era. Ono’s style, if not herself, now had a
following. The lyrics have an erotic tone. She sings “touch me” and “shak-
ing inside” in the same line. In the last half of the song, she adds her spoken
voice that, mixed at the same volume, competes with and alternates with her
singing of the lyrics. Ono’s voice-over builds toward an orgasmic climax call-
ing “faster!” and “harder!” in Japanese, and Lennon’s screeching guitar work
matches her and urges her on.
In the closing lines of the song, Ono sings of the “faint sound of the child-
hood bell ringing.” This ties in with the bell that opened the record in “(Just
Like) Starting Over” and provides closure for the opening couplet. This was
the flip side of “(Just Like) Starting Over” and certainly showed a different
side of relationships. Where Lennon’s song was praise to the joys of renew-
ing romance at middle age, Ono’s captured the still potent desire of sexual
yearning and need.
Lennon’s “Cleanup Time” has the feel of the Stax and Atlantic label’s soul
records of the mid-1960s. This is particularly evident in the horn charts that
embellish the recording. Lennon’s lyric makes a direct reference to the life-
style the Lennons were living at the Dakota in Manhattan over the previous
five years. He sings, “The queen is ... counting out the money.” Yoko Ono
handled the couple’s business affairs and made shrewd investments during the
time Lennon was taking care of their young son Sean. Beatle fans couldn’t
help but notice the lyrical referencing to Lennon’s White Album song “Cry
Baby Cry,” where he also sings about the actions of a king and queen in their
domestic habitat for part of the song.
Right after the line about the “queen,” Lennon sings, the “king is in the
kitchen making bread.” Again, this follows the story of how the Lennons
were living. John Lennon was so proud of his first loaf of baked bread that he
took a Polaroid photo of his creation. Lennon’s lyrics speak of the home as
the “center” and of being “absolutely free.” He had no recording obligations
and he was enjoying life.
This is hinted at in Shinoyama’s unpretentious back cover photo of the
couple in the city they loved. Dressed in black, they both look across the street
toward Central Park. Each is focused on the same object. The city shows its
blemishes. The street in front of them is filled with an asphalt patch. The trash
can on the curb just behind them is full. The couple is one element of the
hustle and bustle of Manhattan. Traffic moves briskly in both directions, and
pedestrians occupy the same sidewalk off of which the pair just stepped.
Ono’s “Give Me Something” again offers a punk aesthetic. Barely over a
minute and a half, it races through a listing of things and activities that are
cold (eyes, bed) and hard (voice, feelings), and she growls in frustration,
saying “give me something!” that is neither cold nor hard. She then offers
her “heart beat and a bit of tear and flesh” in exchange. The track ends quite
abruptly, leaving a moment of silence before the most interesting couplet of
Double Fantasy.
Cleanup Time, 1975–1980 77
With the big drum sound that would come to define recordings later in the
1980s, Lennon offers the darkest song of the album in the mid-tempo track
“I’m Losing You.” Though not as stark as the songs of the
Plastic Ono Band
era, the guitar line and the drums create a tense atmosphere that underscores
the relationship tensions that are covered in the lyrics. The narrator went for
comfort in the room of a “stranger” and wonders why, or it could be that the
narrator is so alienated that he sees his or the lover’s room as now belong-
ing to a stranger. In the “valley of indecision,” the lines of communication
have been cut. He sings of forgiveness or the lack thereof (“do you still have
to carry that cross?”). The narrator is repentant, but still his relationship is
“slipping away.”
The song is Lennon’s toughest on the album, but it could have been even
tougher. Early on in the
Double Fantasy
session, two members of Cheap Trick
(Rick Nielsen, Bun E. Carlos) and one from King Crimson (Tony Levin)
came into the studio to record the track with Lennon. A take was released on
the
John Lennon Anthology
in 1998. The take is quite good and, without the
production gloss of the album, it roars while not sounding incomplete, mak-
ing it an obvious highlight of the 1998 collection. Leaked news that Lennon
had recorded with members of Cheap Trick spurred rumors that he and Ono
were going to tour with Cheap Trick as their band, similar to how they had
adopted Elephant’s Memory eight years earlier, a fascinating idea that was
probably never under serious consideration—although Cheap Trick’s 1982
song hit “If You Want My Love” certainly sounds more than a little Lennon-
esque in spots, indicating that it might have been a successful collaboration.
The underlying music and rhythm remain the same as the track segues into
Ono’s “I’m Moving On.” This is the sequel or the rest of the story to Lennon’s
“I’m Losing You.” The album’s subtitle “A Heart Play” is most apparent in
the juxtaposition of these tracks. Ono’s narrator tells Lennon’s narrator to
“save (his) sweet talk.” She accuses him of being false and will have nothing of
his “window smile.” She does not want to be intimate with him (“don’t stick
your finger in my pie”). “I’m Moving On” is an explanatory rebuff to “I’m
Losing You.” Ono ends her performance with painful vocal sounds that give
the impression that she has been strangled by the relationship. The previous
song had ended with similar sounds from Lennon’s guitar (and an almost
hidden Morse code message). The narrator wants to break it off but, as in
complicated love entanglements, cannot break it off without much grief.
From the dark tension of these two tracks, the move shifts dramatically
with Lennon’s ballad paean to his young son Sean. The song “Beautiful Boy
(Darling Boy)” has become one of Lennon’s higher-profile compositions
since the time of his passing. The song was used to great effect in the film
Mr. Holland’s Opus
in the reconciliation scene between the music teacher
protagonist and his deaf son. And one line from the song, “Life is what hap-
pens to you when you’re busy making other plans,” has become a greeting
card and calendar quote staple.
78 The Words and Music of John Lennon
“Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” is a lullaby. The relationship of the album
to its creation in Bermuda is evident in the music and lyric of the track.
The instrumental parts of the track are highlighted by steel drum played by
Robert Greenidge. In 1998, Sean Lennon’s first solo album recording,
Into
the Sun,
had a number on it called “Sean’s Song” that used similar ocean
sounds and kettle drums in parts of its production.
The lyrics speak of the narrator “out on the ocean sailing away” thinking
of when his son will “come of age.” (This alludes to the opposite relationship
Lennon had with his father, Alfred, who worked on merchant ships for long
stretches of time but likely did not spend his free moments thinking of the
welfare of his son. John Lennon asserts that things will be different for Sean
and him.) Lennon’s five years with his son at and around the Dakota, and
away from the music business, are evident in the lyric and gentle instrumental
backing.
One bittersweet element when listening to the track is the thought that
Lennon never performed a song with a similar sentiment for his first son,
Julian. Lennon’s song “Good Night” from The Beatles’ White Album was a
lullaby for Julian, but Ringo Starr sang it, and Julian is never named as Sean
is in “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy).” Rather, the mantle to do so was assumed