John Lennon’s tender ballad Woman was the first single released after his murder, and his third and final solo number 1. This touching tribute to his wife Yoko Ono served as a sequel of sorts to Girl, from The Beatles’ Rubber Soul. Ironically, it was the first time an artist had replaced themselves at number 1 since I Want to Hold Your Hand replaced She Loves You in 1963.
Before
Only three days before he was shot dead, Lennon told Rolling Stone that he was inspired to write Woman ‘one sunny afternoon in Bermuda’. It suddenly hit him how much women are taken for granted, and Lennon – whose relationships with women were certainly complex, right back to his feelings for his mother – decided to pay tribute to Ono. Ironically, considering the blame Ono wrongly got for breaking up his old band, he considered Woman the most Beatles-sounding track on his final album, DoubleFantasy. This track is also the only example of a song title used by both Lennon and Paul McCartney for their own separate songs. McCartney’s Woman, written in 1966 under the pseudonym Bernard Webb, was recorded by folk duo Peter and Gordon.
Lennon’s Woman was recorded at sessions on 5 and 27 August, and 8 and 22 September 1980. In addition to lead vocal, he also played an acoustic guitar. Joining him were Earl Slick and Hugh McCracken on guitar, Tony Levin on bass, George Small on piano and synthesiser, Andy Newmark on drums, Arthur Jenkins on percussion, and Michelle Simpson, Ritchie Family members Cassandra Wooten and Cheryl Mason Jacks, and Eric Troyer on backing vocals.
Review
Woman was the highlight of Double Fantasy. The LP is often guilty of being too slick, but the glossy production works in favour of this track, rather than against it. Although Lennon considered it a sequel to Girl, it’s lyrically similar to Jealous Guy. He’s directly apologising to Ono again for past behaviour (perhaps the ‘Lost Weekend’?), but also paying tribute to all women. It would be nice to think, after the stories of his sometimes violent history with women, that this was Lennon at his most honest and contrite.
Opening with a barely audible ‘For the other half of the sky’, there’s sterling synth work from Small, and warm Beatles-like guitar from Slick and McCracken. Somehow, despite the sheen, the swooning backing vocals, and the lack of decent lyrics in the chorus, it’s lovely and really charming. And inevitably, this single gained huge added poignancy following Lennon’s death. A fitting Valentine’s Day number 1, indeed.
But what was going on with that chorus? ‘Ooooh, well well, do-do-do-do-do’ was surely a placeholder that Lennon and Ono decided to leave in? And they say McCartney missed Lennon’s quality control…
Speaking of quality control, I have to mention the official video to Woman. I’m in genuine shock. Ono edited the video in January, and understandably, she will have been in pieces. However, the video veers from touching, with footage of the couple in Central Park two months previous, to poor taste, including the pic of Lennon and his killer, lifted from a newspaper. But what’s really shocking is the image of Lennon’s side profile from the back of the Imagine album, made to morph into the last ever photo of Lennon – in the morgue. Unbelievably, this remains in the official video on YouTube.
After
Woman was the last solo number 1 for John Lennon. However, the outpouring of emotion after his death resulted in Roxy Music’s cover of Jealous Guy knocking Joe Dolce Music Theatre from the top spot. Inevitably, people moved on from their grief, and the next single, Watching the Wheels, only peaked at 30.
Three years later, Ono was finally able to work on Milk and Honey, which was the couple’s next projected LP. Lennon’s work was inevitably a little rough and ready as it had been tragically left unfinished, but Nobody Told Me – originally meant for Ringo Starr – was a number six hit. The follow-up, Borrowed Time, was his last original charting single, making it to 32.
Reissues of Jealous Guy and Imagine failed to reach the top 40 in the 80s, but in the 90s the legend of The Beatles grew in stature once more, thanks in part to Britpop and a newfound appreciation of 60s guitar groups. This coincided with the Anthology project, where Lennon’s 1977 demo of Free as a Bird, and 1979 home recording of Real Love, were transformed into ‘new’ Beatles recordings, courtesy of the surviving members and producer Jeff Lynne. Amazingly, neither went to number 1.
In 2010 a new ‘Stripped Down’ version of Double Fantasy was released. The aim was to remove some of the studio gloss of the original album, and sometimes this worked well. Not with Woman. Part of this song’s appeal was in the production. The 2010 version, shorn of sheen, simply sounded like a demo, not a remix. However, it’s noteworthy that you can hear Lennon drawing his breath in at the close, seemingly a deliberate nod to Girl.
Thanks to AI sound-limiting technology used in Peter Jackson’s excellent Get Back project, McCartney finally felt he could finish Now and Then, the Lennon demo from around 1977 that had been started for Anthology 3 before Harrison refused to continue. Hearing Lennon’s voice, shorn of rough-and-ready ghostly tape echo a la those Anthology 1 and 2 songs, was a beautiful, spine-chilling moment. In 2023, 54 years after The Ballad of John and Yoko, The Beatles were back at number 1.
The Outro
For many years, Lennon’s many flaws (and to be fair, he was very vocal about his failings in his lifetime) were forgotten and because his life was cut tragically short, he became a bona fide icon. A Godlike figure, who age did not dull. The cool, edgy Beatle – which understandably irked McCartney to a degree.
But Lennon’s stature has fallen somewhat in today’s cancel culture. McCartney is often now considered the cool one, his family focused lifestyle now attracting plaudits where he was once laughed at. Lennon may very well have been a nightmare in the age of social media, and his musical comeback may have soon resulted in bland MOR pop (the signs were certainly there in some of Double Fantasy).
However, the truth is more complex than that. Lennon was a troubled man and also one of the greatest singer-songwriters there has ever been – anyone arguing he is the greatest would have a very good argument. The extent to which he was mourned when he passed, and his influence on the era’s number 1s, is more than justified.
The Info
Written by
John Lennon
Producers
John Lennon, Yoko Ono & Jack Douglas
Weeks at number 1
2 (7-20 February)
Trivia
Births
8 February: Actor Ralf Little 9 February: Actor Tom Hiddleston 10 February: TV presenter Holly Willoughby 17 February: Conservative MP Andrew Stephenson
Deaths
10 February: Civil engineer Sir Hubert Shirley-Smith 12 February: Tennis player Murray Deloford 13 February: Writer Eric Whelpton 17 February: David Garnett 18 February: Comic impressionist Peter Cavanagh 19 February: Actress Olive Gilbert/Conservative MP Leonard Plugge 20 February: Cricketer Brian Sellers
Meanwhile…
9 February: Shirley Williams resigns from Labour’s national executive committee.
12 February: The purchase of The Times and Sunday Times newspapers by Rupert Murdoch from The Thomson Corporation is confirmed. Also on this day, Ian Paisley is suspended from the House of Commons for four days after he calls the Northern Ireland Secretary a liar.
13 February: The National Coal Board announces widespread pit closures.
15 February: For the first time, Football League matches take place on a Sunday.
16 February: Two are jailed in connection with the death of industrialist Thomas Niedermayer who had been kidnapped by the Provisional IRA in 1973.
18 February: The Conservative government withdraws plans to close 23 mines following negotiations with the National Union of Mineworkers. Also on this day, Harold Evans is appointed editor of The Times.
20 February: Peter Sutcliffe is charged with the murder of 13 women.
It may have been a new year, but the world was still reeling from the death of John Lennon. Though he was knocked from the top spot by the sickly There’s No One Quite Like Grandma, once the holiday season was over, the public saw sense. One of Lennon’s finest songs, and his biggest seller, the stately Imagine made for a fitting epitaph.
Before
After undergoing primal therapy, the stark, cathartic album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band saw the singer deal with the demise of The Beatles and the childhood trauma of losing his mother when he was a child. It doesn’t get much bleaker than the one-two punch of God and My Mummy’s Dead at the end of that LP, released in 1970.
Lennon started 1971 with a strong political statement. Power to the People saw him reference his non-confrontational approach in Revolution and turn it on its head, urging the public to rise up. Such grand statements didn’t help him appeal to the already paranoid US president, Richard Nixon. But it was a hit, reaching seven in the UK charts.
Work began on Lennon’s second solo album in May. After jamming with George Harrison in New York, the guitarist agreed to be on board for the sessions, and invited Klaus Voorman along too, to resume bass playing duties after his work on the previous LP.
The sessions properly started on 11 May at Lennon’s Ascot Sound Studios at his Tittenhurst Park residence (several tracks had however already been recorded back in February). Phil Spector was back on board as producer after barely being involved in his last album, despite his credit. Lennon wanted a less brittle sound than before, adding strings to the mix and hoping for greater commercial appeal. This might have been partly down to the ensuing war with his former songwriting partner. Lennon perceived Too Many People on Paul McCartney’s album Ram to be a personal attack on him, and so wrote the nasty How Do You Sleep? in response. So, this new album wasn’t exactly smothered in commercial appeal – but it was certainly warmer in general than John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, thanks in part to Torrie Zito’s strings. And of course, because of the title track.
Imagine was inspired in part by Yoko Ono’s 1964 book Grapefruit, particularly the poem Cloud Piece, which featured the words ‘Imagine the clouds dripping, dig a hole in your garden to put them in’ – that made it to the back of Imagine‘s sleeve. Another inspiration was – ironically, considering the line ‘And no religion, too’ a Christian prayer book, given to Lennon and Ono by the comedian Dick Gregory. Lennon also once compared Imagine to The Communist Manifesto.
Perhaps with the musical motif John’s Piano Piece (created during the sessions for Let It Be in 1969) in mind, Lennon finished creating the most of Imagine – both musically and lyrically – in early 1971 at a piano in one of his Tittenhurst bedrooms, while Ono watched on.
The recording of Imagine began late in the morning on 27 May and finished that evening at Ascot Sound Studios. Initially, Spector had tried to record Lennon on his famous white baby grand in his and Ono’s all-white room, but wasn’t happy with the acoustics. He also had session pianist extraordinaire Nicky Hopkins playing along with Lennon but in different octaves. With Voorman on bass and Alan White on drums, Imagine only took three takes in the end. Zito’s strings, performed by The Flux Fiddlers, were overdubbed on 4 July at The Record Plant in New York City.
Review
Where do you start with one of the most famous songs of all time? The reputation of Imagine is so huge, it’s like writing about an ancient hymn. So it came as some surprise to discover it wasn’t even released as a single in the UK until 1975. Why that is the case, I don’t know.
I do know that, in part due to the formidable power of Imagine through the decades, there has also been considerable criticism aimed at the song. Mainly due to the idea that we should imagine no possessions when the man suggesting we do that is a very, very rich man. I don’t think that’s fair, however. Lennon isn’t being hypocritical. As Ringo Starr suggested in a 1981 Barbara Walters interview, Lennon isn’t telling us to give up our possessions. He’s simply asking us to imagine it. Yes, that might make for a convenient get-out clause for the ‘working class hero’, and I can understand the critics who complain that Imagine is trite. And yet, despite being more of a cynic than a dreamer, I buy into it. Imagine is aimed at all the dreamers, the people longing for a better world. The idea that the world Lennon asks us to imagine could be real was out of reach in 1971. In 2024, it’s even harder to picture. But, if you’re still a child at heart or there’s even an element of hippy longing inside you, the chances are you love Imagine.
Musically, Imagine is just as simple as the idealistic world Lennon conjures up – and again, that’s part of its mass appeal. And as prone to overproduction (not as important as him also being a total psychopath, of course) as he was, his work on Imagine is perfect. The piano reverb is warm and enveloping, wrapping you up in the cotton wool of a world with no hell, nothing to kill or die for – a world of peace. The strings are uncharacteristically subtle for a Spector production, and so much better for it.
So, although overfamiliarity breeds contempt and the simplistic world view (ironic considering what a cynic Lennon was) of Imagine understandably rubs some up the wrong way, I could and probably have heard Lennon’s signature solo song a million times, and will hear a million more. But I’ll never tire of it. And if, for all his flaws, Lennon is known for Imagine, well, it does him no harm.
After
Imagine was released as a single in the US in October 1971, where it reached number three. It topped the Canadian charts, and in time became his bestselling solo record. The accompanying album, also released that October in the UK, was also the most commercially and critically successful post-Beatles LP.
The following year, Lennon and Ono released a film of the same name. Its opening scene is now recognised as the official music video for the song, with the couple walking through fog as the piano begins. They enter an all-white room, where Lennon plays his white piano, and as the song progresses, Ono lets light into the room – to the consternation of critics who find it sadly ironic that Lennon is singing of no possessions just as Ono shows how wealthy they were. Four years after the creation of Imagine, the single, housed in a photo by then-girlfriend May Pang in 1974, was finally released in the UK to promote his compilation Shaved Fish. Possibly due to most fans already owning the Imagine album, it only made it to number six.
Following Lennon’s murder in 1980, it was the 1975 single that climbed the charts in January 1981 and became his second posthumous number 1, after (Just Like) Starting Over. The single was re-released in 1988 to accompany the documentary film John Lennon: Imagine, but missed out on the top 40. In 1999 Imagine reached number three.
The Outro
One of the most famous pop songs of all time, Imagine has been covered countless times. Probably the worst version is the widely ridiculed 2020 celebrity version, headed up by actress Gail Gadot during the initial COVID-19 lockdown. It is pure torture.
The Info
Written by
John Lennon
Producers
John Lennon, Yoko Ono & Phil Spector
Weeks at number 1
4 (10 January-6 February)
Trivia
Births
11 January: Singer Jamelia/Kasabian singer Tom Meighan 19 January: Actress Thalia Zucchi 22 January: Footballer Richard Butcher/Rally driver Guy Wilks 25 January: Rower Alex Partridge 29 January: Actress Rachna Khatau 30 January: Footballer Peter Crouch 31 January: Reality TV star Gemma Collins 1 February: Racing driver Rob Austin
Deaths
11 January: Labour MP Malcolm MacDonald 12 January: Actress Isobel Elsom/Labour MP Joseph Sparks 15 January: Racing driver Graham Whitehead 16 January: Actor Bernard Lee 18 January: Engineer David Stirling Anderson 19 January: Boxer Eric Boon/Geologist William John McCallien 20 January: Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer Derick Heathcoat-Amory, 1st Viscount Amory 21 January: Racing driver Cuth Harrison/Welsh poet BT Hopkins/Ulster Unionist Party MP James Stronge (see ‘Meanwhile…’)/Ulster Unionist Party MP Sir Norman Stronge, 8th Baronet (see ‘Meanwhile…’)/Jockey Tommy Weston 22 January: Artist Gladys Vasey 23 January: Economist Sir Andrew Shonfield 27 January: Screenwriter Roger Burford/Landscape architect Brenda Colvin/Lawyer Cecil Davidge 29 January: Aviator John Cecil Kelly-Rogers 2 February: Cricketer Jack Parsons 4 February: Tennis player Joan Ingram/Neurologist Douglas McAlpine 6 February: Cricketer Gilbert Ashton
Meanwhile…
13 January: The prison officers’ overtime ban comes to an end.
14 January: The British Nationality Bill is published.
16 January: Northern Ireland civil rights campaigner and former MP Bernadette McAliskey is shot at home in County Tyrone. Also on this day, 78% of British Steel Corporation workers vote in favour of their chairman’s ‘survival’ plan.
18 January: 10 people were killed in the New Cross house fire. Three more died in hospital.
21 January: Sir Norman Stronge and his son James, both former Stormont MPs, are killed by the IRA.
22 January: Australian mogul Rupert Murdoch agrees to buy The Times newspaper if an agreement can be reached with the unions.
25 January: Four right-wing Labour MPs: Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins, Bill Rodgers and David Owen – dubbed the ‘Gang of Four’ announce The Limehouse Declaration, in which they reveal plans to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
26 January: Nine more Labour MPs declare support for the SDP. Also on this day, Secretary of State for Industry Sir Keith Joseph announces more financial support for British Leyland.
27 January: Tony Benn replaces Bill Rodgers in the Labour Shadow Cabinet.
28 January: Sir Hugh Fraser is removed as the Chairman of the House of Fraser. Also on this day, damage is caused in cells at HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland.
2 February: The Brixton prison escape is released, resulting in the Governor being transferred to an administrative post.
4 February: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announces the Government is to sell half its shares in British Aerospace.
6 February: The coal ship Nellie M is bombed and sunk by an IRA unit driving a hijacked pilot boat in Lough Foyle. Also on this day, the Government drops two controversial clauses of the Nationality Bill.
It’s one of pop’s sadder ironies that it took the shocking murder of John Lennon to give him his first solo number 1, with a song that begins ‘Our life together is so precious together’. The former Beatle had returned to music in 1980, and was talking about his hope for the new decade in his final interviews. The year instead ended with vigils across the globe for a murdered hero.
Before
‘Let’s take a chance and fly away, somewhere.’
Lennon was born 40 years previous, on 9 October 1940, at Liverpool Maternity Hospital. His childhood was famously a mix tragedy and luck. His father Alfred, a n’e’er-do-well merchant seaman, was away from home at the time. At four, his mother, Julia, gave her sister Mimi custody. Aged six, Lennon’s father visited and attempted to take his estranged son to live in New Zealand with him, but it didn’t happen and there would be no further contact between the two until Beatlemania.
Raised by the well-to-do Mimi and her husband, Lennon was considered the class clown, and would draw surreal cartoons for his school magazine TheDaily Howl. He was regularly visited by Julia, who bought him his first guitar in 1956. Famously, his aunt turned her nose up at this, saying: ‘The guitar’s all very well, John, but you’ll never make a living out of it.’ The 15-year-old Lennon payed no mind to this and started a band – The Quarrymen. In 1957, at a legendary village fete in Woolton, Lennon met Paul McCartney and asked him to join the band.
Lennon’s mother was killed when she was hit by a car driven by an off-duty policeman who was under the influence. The trauma brought Lennon and McCartney, who had lost his own mother to cancer, closer together, but the already wayward Lennon drowned his sorrows and frequently got into fights. Now a Teddy Boy, he was accepted into the Liverpool College of Art.
Despite McCartney’s father’s disapproval, Lennon and McCartney began writing songs together. Despite initial reluctance, Lennon agreed to allow George Harrison into the band. The three guitarists’ ranks were soon bolstered by Lennon’s art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, even though he could hardly play. By 1960, they were The Beatles, and Lennon was their leader. They went to Hamburg for a residency, along with new drummer Pete Best. Three residences in and The Beatles, buoyed by the drug Preludin and playing stupidly long sets, became a force to be reckoned with.
Brian Epstein became their manager in 1962, and although the rebellious Lennon bristled at the idea of cleaning up their act and donning suits, he relented. When Sutcliffe decided tasty in Hamburg, McCartney took over on bass, and Best was replaced by Ringo Starr before their debut single on Parlophone, Love Me Do.
From The Beatles rise to fame, through to Beatlemania and the British Invasion, Lennon was their acerbic leader. Brilliantly witty, sarcastic, and prone to many unfortunate ‘cripple’ impressions, he and McCartney were the greatest songwriting team of all time. Writing most of their early work together, they co-wrote three number 1 singles in 1963 – From Me to You, She Loves You (the greatest 60s chart-topper) and I Want to Hold Your Hand.
In 1964 The Beatles released their first film – A Hard Day’s Night. Lennon wrote the film and accompanying LP’s title track, and also the 1964 Christmas number 1, I Feel Fine, which featured feedback from Lennon in the intro. The Beatles had begun to widen their sonic palette.
By 1965, despite being at the peak of their commercial fame, Lennon was feeling disillusioned. He was overweight, exhausted by Beatlemania and literally crying out for help, which translated into the title track of their second film – not that their screaming fans were noticing – they were too busy shaking their heads to yet another pop classic. He and Harrison took LSD for the first time, and further experimentation came from one of their greatest mid-period songs, Ticket to Ride – another primarily Lennon song, and another number 1. But in a sign that Lennon and McCartney were growing apart as songwriting partners, they disagreed on their Christmas single, resulting in the former’s Day Tripper sharing equal billing with We Can Work It Out – although Lennon came up with the pleading middle eight of McCartney’s track.
1966 was a tumultuous year for the Fab Four. An interview with Lennon about the decreasing popularity of the church was blown out of all proportion, resulting in a rare public apology, most likely forced on him by Epstein. Nevertheless, records were burned, and Lennon was threatened. All this, plus the group exhaustion with their endless touring, resulting in a decision that would ultimately change popular music. They didn’t go public with the decision, but that August, they stopped performing for audiences. Despite all this, they entered their imperial phase of studio recording. Lennon was integral in this, contributing the concept of backwards recording in Rain and then the amazing experimentation of Tomorrow Never Knows.
The increasingly pioneering sounds coming out of Abbey Road contributed to the cultural zeitgeist of the Summer of Love in 1967. Although perhaps their single finest record – Lennon’s Strawberry Fields Forever, combined with Penny Lane – failed to top the charts, they were at the peak of their creative powers, releasing Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. And Lennon was responsible for the anthemic number 1 All You Need Is Love, too. But Lennon was lost in constant use of LSD, and later said it came close to erasing his identity. This and the loss of Epstein resulted in McCartney increasingly looking like the band’s new leader, and this started to cause problems.
Lennon’s wife Cynthia found her husband at home with the artist Yoko Ono in May 1968, after they had recorded what became the experimental LP Two Virgins. Soon, the duo were inseparable, for most of the rest of his life. This inevitably had an impact on the already often strained relationships of The Beatles, who wrote and recorded much of their eponymous double album as solo songs, which the rest of the band would merely provide backing to. Although Lennon and Ono were turned on to heroin, his decreasing use of LSD saw a return to his more fiery personality. While more experimental than ever on the sound collage of Revolution 9 and the unreleased What’s the New Mary Jane?, Lennon’s pop dominance of the band had decreased so much, he only contributed one song to the two number 1 singles in 1968, and Revolution was relegated to the B-side of Hey Jude – written by McCartney to give comfort to Lennon’s son, Julian, while his parents divorced.
While Peter Jackson’s Get Back has proved that the Let It Be sessions of early 1969 weren’t as miserable as the world was led to believe, the initial sessions were an often bleak affair, yet by the time of their last public appearance on the rooftop of Apple Studios, Lennon was in his element, offering surreal banter inbetween their set, which featured one of his best later-Beatles-period songs, Don’t Let Me Down.
Relieved that the project was over, The Beatles splintered. Relations between the four were not fab, as Lennon persuaded Harrison and Starr to sign Allen Klein as their new manager, while McCartney relented. Lennon focused on Ono, developing their new project, the Plastic Ono Band. Most of the duo’s material between 1969 and 1974 was credited to this revolving line-up, featuring, at various points, Harrison, Starr, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman and Keith Moon. Lennon and Ono married that March, resulting in the last Beatles number 1 in the band’s lifetime – The Ballad of John and Yoko. The first Plastic Ono Band release was the anti-war classic Give Peace a Chance, in July, which peaked at two. The band went on a brief hiatus while The Beatles recorded what was to be their swansong. Lennon was absent for some of the sessions after a car accident with Ono, but his raunchy Come Together was promoted to an A-side.
With Abbey Road in the can, Lennon went back to concentrating on his new band, and privately decided he was going to leave The Beatles. The grim account of heroin withdrawal, Cold Turkey, followed, then the concert recording Live Peace in Toronto 1969 was released as the 60s – and unbeknownst to the world – The Beatles, drew to a close. The dream was over.
The 70s got off to a great start for Lennon, releasing perhaps his greatest post-Beatles single, InstantKarma!, which began a long working relationship with the unhinged Phil Spector. McCartney angered Lennon, by announcing he had left The Beatles, as publicity for his first solo album. Lennon had been working through primal therapy, resulting in the raw, often painfully honest eponymous album JohnLennon/Plastic Ono Band, one of the last lyrics of which was ‘Don’t believe in Beatles’.
In 1971, Lennon and McCartney were publicly fighting via song, resulting in the bitter How Do You Sleep? on Lennon’s best solo LP, Imagine. That August he and Ono moved to live in New York and began their association with radical left-wing politics. President Richard Nixon’s administration became determined to deport him. At Christmas the couple released their festive classic Happy Xmas (War Is Over) with the Harlem Community Choir.
Over the next few years, Lennon’s commercial standing began to drop, with he and Ono releasing the highly political but average Some Time in New York City with Elephant’s Memory in 1972. Then aLennon self-produced and released the decidedly poor Mind Games in late-1973 – although the title track is excellent. He and Ono’s marital problems resulted in their separation, and the start of an 18-month period immortalised as the ‘Lost Weekend’, in which he had a relationship with his and Ono’s personal assistant, May Pang. Lennon ran wild, often with Harry Nilsson, drinking heavily and making headlines.
During that time he released Walls and Bridges, featuring one of his best solo songs, #9 Dream. Elton John featured on Whatever Gets You thru the Night – his first US number 1. Lennon had made a bet that that if the single topped the charts, he’d perform live with John, which he duly did. Lennon and Ono were reunited in 1975, and he co-wrote and performed on David Bowie’s first US number 1, Fame. But following Rock ‘n’ Roll, a covers album, in 1975, Lennon went on hiatus to help raise his and Ono’s son, Sean, and would only record the occasional demo when inspiration took hold.
When McCartney released the single Coming Up in 1980, Lennon was impressed and even said so publicly, with the former Beatles having made amends and occasionally meeting during the 70s. Then in June, Lennon was involved in a sailing trip which was hit by a storm. As all the crew fell ill, Lennon was forced to take control, and the incident affected him profoundly. His confidence restored, and with a newfound zest for life, he decided to release a new album with his wife – their first since Some Time in New York City.
Ono approached producer Jack Douglas with a batch of demos, and that August they started recording in secret at New York City’s Hit Factory, as Lennon was concerned the sessions might not be good enough. By September they were more confident and went public that they were back. The newly formed Geffen Records was successful, thanks in part to David Geffen making it clear he regarded Ono’s contributions as the same quality as Lennon’s.
With its warm, nostalgic 50s feel and lyrics about rejuvenation, it made perfect sense to place (Just Like) Starting Over at the start of Double Fantasy, and to make it his comeback single. The song’s origins began with the demo recordings Don’t Be Crazy and My Life. Lennon wrote Starting Over, as it was originally called, in Bermuda, and despite being recorded on 9 August, it was one of the last songs to be completed for the album, mixed at the Record Plant on 25 and 26 September. Featuring on the recording are David Bowie’s guitarist Earl Slick, Hugh McCracken, also on guitar, King Crimson’s Tony Levin on bass, keyboardist George Small, Sly and the Family Stone drummer Andy Newmark and Arthur Jenkins on percussion. Providing the doo-wop-style backing vocals are Michelle Simpson, Cassandra Wooten, Cheryl Manson Jacks and Eric Troyer.
Review
(Just Like) Starting Over (the extra bit in brackets was added to avoid confusion with Dolly Parton’s Starting Over Again) begins with a deliberate callback to Mother, the opening track on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band 10 years previous. Whereas the bells that toll on Mother are slow and foreboding, and reminiscent of a funeral bell, the ringing here is light and airy, and (sadly ironically) herald a hopeful, optimistic Lennon, softened by years of time as a father and absent from the music business. His fire seems to be gone, he’s retreated into the rock’n’roll of his youth, and he’s perfectly content with that. And so am I.
Lennon might not have thought (Just Like) Starting Over was the best track on Double Fantasy, but it’s one of the strongest on what is otherwise a pretty average album. Had he not been out of the public eye for so long, this track wouldn’t have had that added poignancy, and wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Rock ‘n’ Roll, that ropey collection of mostly poor covers that soundtracked his youth. Gone is one of the best voices of his generation, as Lennon ramps the pastiche levels up even more by singing in a style that brings to mind Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison. Sure, this idealistic vision of Lennon and Ono is schmaltzy, saccharine and most likely somewhat false, but it’s rather charming and lovely. And of course, in hindsight, those lyrics are desperately sad. Thumbs down to the awfully mixed backing vocals, though. Was it a failed attempt by Douglas to capture that echoey 50s sound?
After
(Just Like) Starting Over was released in the UK on 23 October, and a day later in the US. Riding on a wave of goodwill as the world welcomed back an old friend, the single was Lennon’s strongest performing record in the UK since Happy Xmas (War Is Over), which had reached four in 1971. It peaked at eight, and although reviews for Double Fantasy were warning that Lennon had lost his bite (and he was looking older than his years and was painfully thin), the future looked bright. He and Ono had recorded enough material for a follow-up, and with his confidence returning, maybe we’d see some of that fire return. Of course, we’ll never know.
Lennon’s comeback single had slipped to 21 here, and six in the US by 8 December, but promotional work continued for Double Fantasy, released a few weeks prior. At around 5pm, he was stopped outside his home, the Dakota building, by a random fan. Lennon was photographed signing a copy of his new album for the grinning Mark Chapman, and then left with Ono for a session at the Record Plant. At approximately 10.50pm Lennon and Ono returned and were walking through the archway of the Dakota, when Chapman shot him twice in the back and twice more in the shoulder at close range. Lennon was pronounced dead less than half an hour later.
Shocked, confused and in mourning, the world chose to pay tribute to Lennon, who had soundtracked the lives of so many, by listening to his music. In much the same way his hero Buddy Holly’s It Doesn’t Matter Anymore became a posthumous chart-topper after his untimely death, (Just Like) Starting Over inevitably began to sell once more. 12 days after his death, Lennon had his first solo number 1. Such was the magnitude of his loss, it wouldn’t be his last.
The Outro
In 2010 Ono and Douglas released Double Fantasy Stripped Down, which was an attempt to wipe away the studio sheen of the original album. The version of (Just Like) Starting Over is thankfully free of those odd backing vocals, and is OK but pretty inconsequential.
The Info
Written by
John Lennon
Producers
John Lennon, Yoko Ono & Jack Douglas
Weeks at number 1
1 (20-26 December)
Trivia
Births
20 December: Footballer Ashley Cole/Footballer Fitz Hall 21 December: Scottish actress Louise Linton
Deaths
20 December: Locomotive engineer Roland Bond/Footballer Tom Waring 22 December: Magician Lewis Ganson/Physician Thomas Cecil Hunt 23 December: Playwright Frank Norman/Anglican bishop Ambrose Reeves 25 December: Comedian Fred Emney/Explorer Quintin Riley
Meanwhile…
26 December: Sightings of unexplained lights near RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk became known as the ‘Rendlesham Forest Incident’ – the most famous reported UFO sightings in the UK.
With a triumphant ‘Aaaaawh yeah!’ to kick things off, Metal Guru was a return to form after the lacklustre Telegram Sam. It was their fourth number 1 single, but it was to be their last chart-topper, and Bolan would be dead only five years later.
Before
March 1972 was a busy time for the band, with two nights headlining at the Empire Pool, Wembley, filmed by Ringo Starr, who was to direct a T. Rex film, Born to Boogie. That same month the group began recording their third album The Slider. It was made at Château d’Hérouville near Paris, France, after Elton John suggested it as a way to avoid paying tax. Produced once more by Visconti, it captured T. Rextasy at its peak, but the fall was to be steep.
Metal Guru was rightly picked to be the opening track and gets the LP off to a blistering start. Bolan had been inspired to write about religion, and when explaining the message behind the song, proclaimed to believe in a god but wasn’t religious. Metal Guru was to represent all gods. Its mentions of the guru sitting in an ‘armour plated chair’, ‘all alone without a telephone’ create a vague image of a godhead who can communicate without the aid of BT, but as usual it’s an excuse for Bolan to conjure up some brilliant lines, and some terrible ones, even within the same verse. Consider;
‘Metal Guru has it been, just like a silver-studded sabre-tooth dream I’II be clean you know pollution machine, oh yeah’
First line, brilliant, second, not great.
Review
Fortunately the music behind Metal Guru is better. No great change to what had come before, but the similarities aren’t as obvious as Telegram Sam, and the sound is bigger and more muscular without sounding bloated, which it often became once Visconti stopped working with Bolan. The ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ chant brings to mind the end of Hot Love, but rather than comparing it to past glories, you’re likely to notice how much Panic by The Smiths sounds like it, which Morrissey and Marr did deliberately, both being huge T. Rex fans.
After
Metal Guru enjoyed a month at number 1, and with a new album set for release later that summer and the film to follow, it seemed T. Rex would be around for a long time to come. The Slider is very much Electric Warrior Part Two, but that’s no bad thing, and with tracks like Baby Strange, it’s a great glam time capsul. But Born to Boogie, released in December, was a surreal mess of a movie, blasted by critics but loved by fans. It was Bolan’s very own Magical Mystery Tour.
Children of the Revolution was released inbetween the two projects, and although it was another excellent single, but it missed the top spot. They also recorded fourth album Tanx. Finally moving on from the sound of the last two LPs, Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman were ditched as backing vocalists and replaced with a gospel sound. It’s patchy at best.
Much better was the standalone single 20th Century Boy, released two months after Tanx in March 73. Muscular and sparky, it’s the first T. Rex song I ever heard, and still my favourite, thanks to its use in a Levi’s advert starring Brad Pitt in 1991, having been re-released at the time.
Although Bolan shouldn’t be criticised for finally trying to develop his sound, it came too late. His friend/rival David Bowie was now racing ahead thanks to his Ziggy Stardust creation, and Slade were the most popular glam outfit. Bolan was also putting on weight, no longer that attractive, elfin glam god. 1974 album Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow – A Creamed Cage in August was credited to ‘Marc Bolan & T. Rex’. The line-up was expanded to feature second guitarist Jack Green and pedal steel guitarist BJ Cole, and Bolan’s lover Gloria Jones featured in backing singers The Cosmic Choir. It’s an interesting listen, but the magic was getting harder to find. They were dropped in the US before the album could be released, and drummer Bill Legend quit.
Soon after Bolan’s already huge ego became out of control. He sacked Visconti and Mickey Finn left the group. The single Zip Gun Boogie was released as a solo single but performed so badly he took on the T. Rex mantle again.
He produced the next album Bolan’s Zip Gun (1975) himself, and it was savaged. The music press mocked him for his weight gain and he became a tax exile in Monte Carlo. The production became even more far-out on Futuristic Dragon, featuring disco backings and even a sitar. It also performed badly, but it’s a pretty interesting listen.
Single I Love to Boogie, also released in 1976, was a return to a simplistic sound, and with punk on the rise, suddenly a comeback was on the cards. Bolan slimmed down and toured with punk pioneers The Damned. He set to work on Dandy in the Underworld, released in March 1977 to critical acclaim.
Six months later, he was even fronting his own TV show. Marc, broadcast over six weeks on ITV, saw Bolan introducing some of his favourite new punk bands including The Jam and Generation X, as well as T. Rex performing old and new songs, albeit miming. The final episode featured none other than Bowie, then producing some of the most adventurous music of his life, produced by, ironically, Visconti. Both singers were glad to see each other and wrote a song together, Madman, before recording the show. In an eerie symbolic premonition of what was to come, during their duet, Bolan tripped on a microphone cable and fell off the stage. This final episode of Marc was broadcast on 20 September, four days after Bolan’s fatal accident.
According to Vicky Aram, a former nightclub singer who had been invited to discuss recording with Bolan after a party, she was driving behind Bolan’s Mini, being driven by his girlfriend Jones and with Bolan beside her, when the Mini hit a steel-reinforced fence post after failing to negotiate a small humpback bridge near Barnes, south-west London. She found the car near a sycamore tree (now a rock shrine). Bolan had died from a horrific head injury due to an eye bolt in the fence, and Jones was severely injured.
Of the classic T. Rex line-up, only Legend remains. Guitarist Steve Currie played with Chris Spedding before moving to the Algarve in Portugal, where he too died in a car crash in 1981 in Portugal. Finn played as a session musician for The Soup Dragons and The Blow Monkeys before his death in 2003 of possible liver or kidney failure.
The Outro
Bolan’s star shone relatively briefly compared to some musical legends, but it also shone brighter than many. Were it not for him, who knows if glam rock would ever have happened. He took a potentially moribund decade and made it fun, sexy and cool. Pop had been declining ever since The Beatles had split, and Bolan brought it back to life. It’s likely that his 1977 comeback would have been short-lived, as his musical range was limited, but we’ll never know. What we do know is that T. Rex at their best – Hot Love, Get It On, Metal Guru, 20th Century Boy – have not only aged extremely well, they sound better than ever, all these years later. For as long as there is the teenage dream, there is Marc Bolan, and there is T. Rex.
The Info
Written by
Marc Bolan
Producer
Tony Visconti
Weeks at number 1
4 (20 May-16 June)
Trivia
Births
23 May:Cricketer Martin Saggers 3 June:Footballer Steve Crane 4 June:Actress Debra Stephenson 7 June:Athlete Curtis Robb
Deaths
22 May:Poet Cecil Day-Lewis/Actress Margaret Rutherford 28 May:Edward, Duke of Windsor (see Meanwhile…)
Meanwhile…
22 May: The Dominion of Ceylon became the Republic of Sri Lanka.
24 May: The final stretch of the M6 motorway opened between junctions 6 (Spaghetti Junction) and 7 north of Birmingham. Also that day, Glasgow-based Rangers FC won the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, beating FC Dynamo Moscow 3-2 in the final at Camp Nou in Barcelona. Celebrations were marred by a pitch invasion from their supporters, which led to the team being banned from defending the trophy next season.
26 May: State-owned travel company Thomas Cook & Son was privatised.
28 May: 35 years after he abdicated the throne, the controversial royal Edward, Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, died of cancer at his home in France.
30 May: The Official Irish Republican Army declared a ceasefire in Northern Ireland.
1 June: Hotels and boarding houses became required to obtain certification when the Fire Precautions Act 1971 came into force.
3 June: A Protestant demonstration in Derry turned into a battle.
5 June: The funeral of The Duke of Windsor was held at Windsor Castle.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the greatest pop songwriting partnership of all time, together or separately writing 17 number 1 singles for The Beatles. But George Harrison has always been my favourite member of the Fab Four. Sardonic, mystical and more level-headed than the others, ‘the Quiet One’ blossomed at the end of his time in The Beatles. He had matured into a great songwriter, and I’ve always liked an underdog. Something was the first dance on my wedding day, and my youngest daughter was born to Here Comes the Sun. I even have the latter tattooed on my right arm.
Despite his new-found confidence and prolificness, it must still have come as a shock to the other three members of The Beatles that it would be Harrison who would score the first solo number 1 and biggest seller of 1971 with My Sweet Lord.
Before
Born 25 February 1943 in Wavertree, Liverpool, Harrison was the youngest of four children. His father Harold was a ship’s steward and his mother, Louise, a music-loving shop assistant. Fascinatingly, when Louise was pregnant with George, she would listen to a show called Radio India every Sunday, hoping that the sounds of the sitar and tabla would make her baby peaceful.
As a child, Harrison liked artists including George Formby and Cab Calloway, until in 1956 he had an epiphany while on his bike. He heard Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel blaring from a house, and was hooked. At first his dad was apprehensive, but relented and bought him an acoustic guitar. He formed a skiffle group called The Rebels, and one day on the bus to school, he befriended an older boy called Paul McCartney.
Two years later, Harrison was accepted into McCartney’s group The Quarrymen following initial skepticism from founder John Lennon. By the time the group had become The Beatles and settled on the legendary line-up, Harrison was their lead guitarist.
In their early recording years, Harrison would usually get a song or two to sing on each album, either a Lennon-McCartney original like Do You Want to Know a Secret? (from first LP Please Please Me) or a classic rock’n’roll track such as Roll Over Beethoven from the follow-up With the Beatles. It was on this album that he made his songwriting debut, with the typically sulky, downbeat but interesting Don’t Bother Me.
His influence would start to really be felt on the band when recording 1965’s Rubber Soul. By this point he was a fan of folk rock from the US, but had also become interested in Indian music through the filming of that year’s film Help!. His track If I Needed Someone, a Byrds soundalike, was one of that album’s highlights (he later said this was his favourite Beatles album).
Harrison became ever more fascinated with Indian culture and music, and Love You To on Revolver and Within You, Without You on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band helped turn their fans on to both – and many other bands too. And me – it may sound hard to believe, but it was The Beatles’ Indian-influenced songs that really got me into the Fab Four. I can remember the exact moment, in fact – I tranced out to Harrison’s Blue Jay Way at a friend’s house (completely without the aid of drink or drugs, I should add) and became obsessed. His first ever B-side, 1968’s The Inner Light, also marked the end of his overtly Indian material within the band.
The Beatles began splintering while recording their self-titled double album that year, and Harrison quit at one point, but two of his four tracks that made the final cut, While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Long, Long, Long, were among the album’s best.
His songwriting went from strength to strength from here on in. Something was his first A-side, and famously Frank Sinatra called it the finest love song of the past 50 years. After Abbey Road had been released, they had discussed continuing, and Lennon suggested Harrison should be allowed an equal share of songs on their next album – something McCartney disagreed with.
Harrison had already released two solo albums before The Beatles split – the 1968 film soundtrack Wonderwall Music and the experimental Electronic Music the following year. He was stockpiling songs all the time, recording a beautiful demo of All Things Must Pass during Beatles’ sessions. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when he decided his first post-Beatles album, produced with Phil Spector and named after said track, would be triple-length.
Among those songs was his first solo single, My Sweet Lord. First written in December 1969, it was influenced by his production duties on Radha Krishna Temple’s Hare Krishna Mantra. Harrison was a guest, along with friends Eric Clapton and Billy Preston on Delaney & Bonnie’s European tour. He ducked out of a press conference and began vamping on an acoustic guitar, alternating between singing ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Hare Krishna’. Whether he was aware he was doing it to the tune of He’s So Fine, a 1963 hit for The Chiffons, we’ll never know, but he was also deliberately influenced by the Edwin Hawkins Singers’ rendition of Oh Happy Day.
At the time of writing My Sweet Lord, Harrison wasn’t intending on going solo, so he offered it to Preston, whose second album, Encouraging Words, he was producing. With the Edwin Hawkins Singers providing some great backing vocals, Preston’s version is more overtly gospel, with the backing chant being mostly ‘Hallelujah’.
Letting someone else record it was one thing, but Harrison was nervous about doing it himself later in 1970. He wanted to sing about needing a direct relationship with God, and for others to be able to do so too, whatever their religion, and so he reintroduced the Hare Krishna mantra to the song, as well as the third verse of the Guru Stotram an ancient hymn in praise of Hindu spiritual teachers:
‘I offer homage to my guru, who is as great as the creator Brahma, the maintainer Vishnu, the destroyer Shiva, and who is the very energy of God.’
Opening with a low-key strum (in general, this is a pretty lo-fi recording by Spector’s usual standards) that’s much more ‘Harrison’, his version comes to life with some nice slide guitar work that’s also unmistakably him, before he begins singing. Harrison is earnest, pleading almost, for God, in whichever form, to come into his life. As cleverly noted elsewhere, it’s almost like Harrison is on his way for a first date, nervous but keen to find romance. I prefer the choice to build the song up, keeping the backing vocals until later – it helps create the ‘epic’ atmosphere such a song deserves. Critics of My Sweet Lord complain that the backing vocals smother it, but I can’t agree with that. They make it such a joyful song of love and devotion, and I’m speaking as an atheist.
My Sweet Lord had an all-star role call of collaborators. Among those making an appearance at Abbey Road Studios were Preston on piano, Clapton on acoustic guitar, his Derek and the Dominoes colleagues Bobby Whitlock on harmonium and Jim Gordon on drums and percussion, Ringo Starr on the same, Pete Ham, Tom Evans and Joey Molland from Badfinger on acoustic guitars, their drummer Mike Gibbins on tambourine, Klaus Voorman from Plastic Ono Band on bass, future Dream Weaver hitmaker Gary Wright on electric piano and Ravi Shankar collaborator John Barham providing the beautiful string arrangement. It is unknown, however, who played on the selected takes. I could always make out Harrison’s voice among the backing singers – what I didn’t know until now is that it’s purely him, multi-tracked and credited to ‘the George O’Hara-Smith Singers’.
Harrison announced in October 1970 that there would be no single before the release of All Things Must Pass, but Spector and bosses at Apple disagreed and thought My Sweet Lord had real potential. Harrison backed down, and the single was released in November in the US, then in January 1971 in the UK. It only took a fortnight to climb to number 1.
After
My Sweet Lord went on to sell millions, and All Things Must Pass was a huge-selling album. While Lennon and McCartney were busy sending each other coded insults via respective albums Imagine and Ram, Harrison, for a time looked like he would be the most successful solo Beatle of all. It didn’t work out that way, but he wouldn’t have wanted it to anyway. It may not be his greatest song, but it’s certainly up there, and if anyone deserved some time in the limelight, it’s the Dark Horse.
The Outro
In 2002, Harrison’s debut single was re-released posthumously and went to number 1 once more. A very fitting tribute. I’ll look at the rest of Harrison’s life and career, and the controversy regarding this song, when we get to that point.
The Info
Written by
George Harrison
Producers
George Harrison & Phil Spector
Weeks at number 1
5 (30 January-5 March) *BEST-SELLING SINGLE OF THE YEAR*
Trivia
Births
30 January:Actor Darren Boyd 31 January:Northern Irish TV presenter Patrick Kielty 2 February:Singer Michelle Gayle 3 February:Playwright Sarah Kane 13 February:Singer Sonia 16 February:Actress Amanda Holden/Actor Steven Houghton 23 February:TV presenter Melinda Messenger 24 February:TV presenter Nicky Hambleton-Jones 1 March:Classical composer Thomas Adès 3 March: Satirist Charlie Brooker
Meanwhile…
3 February: Gritty British crime thriller Get Carter, starring Michael Caine, premiered in Los Angeles.
4 February: Car manufacturer Rolls-Royce went bankrupt.
11 February: The UK, along with the USA, the USSR and others, signed the Seabed Treaty, which outlawed nuclear weapons on the ocean floor.
15 February: Decimal Day! People all across the UK and Republic of Ireland were left confused when currency went decimal, despite public information films like this explaining beforehand.
24 February: Home Secretary Reginald Maudling announced the Immigration Bill, which would strip Commonwealth immigrants of their right to remain in the UK. The bill was of course supported by Enoch Powell, but the controversial former shadow cabinet minister continued to demand a massive voluntary repatriation scheme for the immigrants.
1 March: An estimated 120,000 to 250,000 “kill the bill” protesters went on strike against the 1971 Industrial Relations Act in London.
