Return to fantasy land

THE ALBUM CLUB:Thirty years to the day after Lennon's death,  DARAGH DOWNES rounds up four guests to discuss John and Yoko's Double Fantasy (Stripped Down), a radical new remix commissioned by Ono

THEY CALL it the retrospective illusion. You watch a smiling JFK arriving at Dallas Love Field airport and your mind’s eye fast-forwards to the obscenities about to be captured on Abraham Zapruder’s Bell Howell camera.

It's no different with John and Yoko's Double Fantasy. How can you hear him singing a lullaby to Sean, or her declaring that hard times are over, without your heart breaking at the deed of horror that lies just around the corner?

When Double Fantasywas originally released on November 17th, 1980, it met with a tepid reception. The general sense was that the ex-Beatle had traded in his mojo for the gentle joys of middle-aged domesticity. Fans wished him well but were aghast at the perceived drop in artistic temperature. Many blamed Ono, whose equal presence on the album especially rankled.

And then came December 8th. Four bullets from a deranged man's revolver transformed the record from a subprime comeback effort to The Last Lennon Release – Ever. Songs such as Woman, (Just Like) Starting Over, and Watching the Wheelssuddenly took on a devastating poignancy, even for those who hadn't rated them first time around.

DONOVAN’S DEMO

Like most people, Donovan remembers exactly where he was when he heard the appalling news. He was having breakfast in a hotel in Italy. Unlike most people, he had lost not just a hero but an old friend. And it is his treasured memories of that friendship that, inevitably, have been informing his response to the new version of Double Fantasy.

" Beautiful Boyis particularly touching," he says, "because John didn't have a childhood himself. And in India, when we were together in 1968, he asked me to help him write a song about childhood, a childhood he didn't have with his mother, Julia. And I taught him a guitar style that produced songs like Juliaand Dear Prudence. And so this album is touching for me. It is a childhood not lived, a fatherhood with his first boy Julian that couldn't be lived because of fame and its extraordinary pressures, and then another chance at fatherhood which he grabbed and which the songs tell."

What does Donovan make of Yoko's decision to subject Double Fantasyto a makeover? He applauds it unreservedly. "We used to call it 'like the demo'. When the finished product is out, it might be all shiny and beautiful and polished, but there's a memory of that early part of the session when it was pure emotion and raw. I like stripped-down."

Donovan has no time for the anti-Yoko sentiment that has marked much commentary on Lennon’s life in and beyond The Beatles. But he does feel that she doesn’t quite shine on a collaborative album like this. “My general impression when I first heard Yoko was that she’s a performing artist and that it worked better in an art gallery, or a happening, as we used to call them. But it seems like it doesn’t work as a recording when you listen again and again.”

NO BAGGAGE

Siobhán McGuire, by far the youngest person present, came to the album with the fewest preconceptions. “I only found out last night that it was released very shortly before John’s death, so in a sense I only listened to it in terms of the music rather than the history and the baggage that came with it.”

While the two songs that have endeared themselves to her most are Lennon's Dear Yokoand Cleanup Time, the real revelation has been Ono. Initially the vocal style came across as a rather off-putting blend of Marianne Faithfull and Björk, with the extended bout of orgasmic groaning in the outro of Kiss, Kiss, Kissproving a particularly uncomfortable listen. But once McGuire got past the first four or five listens, she no longer found herself wanting to skip to the next Lennon track. Towards the end, indeed, "it was listening to Yoko's songs more than John's that I actually looked forward to when I put the CD on. She's a serious grower."

YOKO: MORE JOHN THAN JOHN?

Fintan O'Toole also endorses the Ono material, saying this reissue has overturned a "ridiculous, childish, inherited prejudice" against her. For him, these remixes reveal Ono as the real Lennonist presence on Double Fantasy. "I think this album is much closer from Yoko's point of view to something like John's Plastic Ono Band, in that it's much more direct, uncomfortable, confessional, and genuinely stripped bare. These songs are full of, 'This guy's a bloody nightmare to live with. And he's not giving me any kind of reciprocal relationship here and I really want it.' There's a real drama to that kind of stuff."

He is impressed by the way Ono anticipates later musical currents. “In 1980 she just sounded weird. But since then we’ve had people like Björk. Things have changed in terms of what your brain can take in in terms of sounds. And she sounds much more of a forerunner for what women can do in terms of song. Whereas at the time she just seemed like this very weird Japanese woman who was stopping our great hero from being himself.”

While O'Toole has heard nothing on the new Double Fantasyto make him revise his 1980 verdict on the Lennon songs – "good songs, not great songs" – it grieves him to be reminded of the chasm between Lennon's "absolute vulnerability" and the synthetic emotionalism of today's celebrities.

FEMINIST CHALLENGE

For Rev Anne Taylor, strong Liverpool family connections have lended added resonance to this anniversary. When Lennon songs such as Womanfirst entered popular consciousness in traumatic fashion 30 years ago, she was already a fan. These better-known numbers still strike her as the best things on Double Fantasy.

The Ono tracks leave her cold, at least musically. The lyrics pique her interest, however. “I don’t find Yoko the easiest to listen to, but when I actually got out the lyrics I thought ‘boy, there are some challenges in there’.”

She is also intrigued by Yoko’s undermining of the myth of marital serenity, which John keeps trying to construct. The key to the album, she argues, lies in this tense call-and-response structure, with Yoko more than holding her own as a provocative feminist presence.

“I think there are challenges to men in there that live on!”

Donovan brings the session to a close by taking out his guitar and treating us to a John Lennon medley. He then shows an enraptured O’Toole the clawhammer picking style he taught Lennon in Rishikesh.

Thanks to Tower Records, Wickow Street, Dublin

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