John Lennon and Yoko Ono : Clean Up Time
On November 17, 1980 John Lennon and Yoko Ono released Double Fantasy. It was Lennon's first album in five years where he played stay at-home dad with Sean and spent time separated from Ono. Had Lennon not been murdered weeks later, its legacy as a "heart play" might have been very different: an honest look at a relationship between two strong personalities, one living in fantasy ; the other more of a realist.
"Well, I know I hurt you then," sings Lennon on "I'm Losing You". "But hell, that was way back when/ Well, do you still have to carry that cross?"
"I'm moving on, moving on you're getting phony," responds Ono.
40 years later, it's Yoko's music that thrills me more. There's too much polish, too much studio craftsmanship, in the Lennon songs.
The immediate reviews of the album were not necessarily kind.
Charles Shaar, writing for NME, memorably said Double Fantasy "sounds like a great life, but it makes for a lousy record. ... I wish Lennon had kept his big happy trap shut until he had something to say that was even vaguely relevant to those of us not married to Yoko."
David Hepworth of Smash Hits was also brutal.
More negative reviews were withheld following the murder, including those for Rolling Stone and The New York Times.
My dad was one of the millions who bought Double Fantasy after the murder. He was writing a novel about the dissolution of a marriage at the time and I think he found wisdom in the lyrics, especially Yoko's. Some of her biting lines sound like something his next wife was already saying. (The food is cold/ Your eyes are cold/ The window's cold /The bed is cold). He honestly wanted to make a go of this upcoming third marriage but it wouldn't last.
Double Fantasy is more than a memento. But, like Rumours and Shoot Out The Lights, an honest dialogue with universal appeal. As Sean Lennon said "“I feel like Double Fantasy would have been the beginning of a whole new style of records for him."
The stripped down version of Double Fantasy was a revelation to me. The gloss is gone and we hear Lennon's true voice, warts and all, without the studio trickery.
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