John Lennon : (Just Like) Starting Over
On October 20 in the US and 24 in the UK , 1980 John Lennon released the single "(Just Like) Starting Over", his first in five years and the final of his lifetime. Composed of three songs Lennon had demo'd , the song reminded fans of his Rock and Roll album of 1950's covers. In interviews Lennon would refer to his performance as "Elvis Orbison".
I’d done that music and identified with it – that was my period – but I’d never written a song that sounded like that period. So I just thought, Why the hell not? In the Beatles days that would have been taken as a joke. One avoided clichés. ‘Course now clichés are not clichés anymore.
The single charted well even before Lennon's death pushed the ironically named song to Number One. In the US it had reached Number 3 and in the UK Number 8.
Yoko, whose "Kiss Kiss Kiss" was the B side, told Ken Sharp:
We knew that song would be the first single. I love ‘Starting Over’, but when I hear it now it just chokes me up a bit because it’s how we felt at the time. We really thought that we were starting over and it didn’t work out that way.
Much more can be discovered about the song on The Beatles Bible.
No comments:
Post a Comment