John Lennon and Yoko Ono Double Fantasy Stripped Down (CD, Capitol Records (CD), 2010) ***
John Lennon and Yoko Ono Milk And Honey (Vinyl and CD, Polygram Records (vinyl), EMI Records (CD), 1983 (vinyl) 2001 (CD) ****
John Lennon and Yoko Ono Heart Play - Unfinished Dialogue (Vinyl, Polygram Records, 1983) *
John Lennon Bedism (CD, Dressed To Kill, 1999 *
John Lennon In My Life (Triple CD, Dressed To Kill 1998) *
John Lennon Testimony (CD, Live Gold Productions 1990) *
John & Yoko Lennon The Interview (Double cassette tape, BBC Productions, 1990) *
Genre: Beatle pop/rock
Places I remember: Marbecks Records for the vinyl, JB Hi-Fi for the CDs. Cassette tape from music shop in Cambridge.
Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Beautiful Boy
Gear costume: Grow Old With Me
Active compensatory factors: Early in December 1980 I was working at Marbecks Records in the Queen's Arcade in downtown Auckland, as I was on my varsity break.
Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Beautiful Boy
Gear costume: Grow Old With Me
I'd just got home and the phone rang - I went to my parents' bedroom to answer the call - it was my friend Greg Knowles. He said John Lennon had been shot in New York and was dead. I sagged to the floor in shock.
I was numb for days. I observed Yoko's call for silence on a bus ride into Queen Street.
Of course I'd bought Double Fantasy on release day, nabbed a spare poster from work (it's still on my music room wall) and bought the Playboy with the interview in it from the Queen's Arcade magazine shop.
Full disclosure: I don't play these albums these days. Two reasons - it's profoundly painful hearing them and thinking about those events and what could have been (Grow Old With Me tears me up every time), and secondly - he and Yoko made better records that I prefer to remember him by.
That said, after listening to them again for this blog review, they've actually aged reasonably well - especially the Lennon songs. Yoko was going for state of the art 1980 production and that means they are anchored more in time. Lennon didn't appear to care so his songs aren't of a specific time. They are laid back and sparse.
I continued to collect the stuff Yoko released in the aftermath of John's murder, but that was hard too. Same reasons, plus it somehow didn't seem the same - a kind of morbid fascination didn't sit right and a whiff of that is still attached to Milk And Honey (although John was clearly back in prolific mode) and Heart Play.
John on Milk and Honey sounds looser than Double Fantasy, sounds a bit more casually happy. I suppose because he didn't have the luxury of time to finesse them more. Boogie babe!
Yoko's songs do have the time to sound more produced, but that also means they are more of their time again.
Before I get to the interview discs/tapes: Double Fantasy Stripped Down. It's actually a double CD package - the original album and the 'new' version.
Overall I prefer the original version. The stripped down one feels more like high quality demo recordings. I guess it's what you're used to. I also prefer the Let It Be version that was released, even with the Spector embellishments, because that's what I heard for years.
Heart Play is an album of interviews done in 1980. The other CDs and cassette listed above are all interview albums. I've listened to them once - strictly for collectors 0nly. They are especially painful to listen to post murder.
Where do they all belong? My decision not to include compilations on this collection countdown means I won't include all of the various collections that have come out since 1983 as Yoko determines to keep John's memory alive.
Where do they all belong? My decision not to include compilations on this collection countdown means I won't include all of the various collections that have come out since 1983 as Yoko determines to keep John's memory alive.
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