The murder of John Lennon in December 1980
sent shock waves around the world. 1980 was also a crucial year for Lennon, who'd
emerged from a five-year hiatus, ready to make music once again. This is what the final 12 months of John Lennon's
life were like. In 1975, five tumultuous years after the break-up
of the Beatles, Lennon and his second wife, Yoko Ono, withdrew from the public eye. This was to concentrate on raising his second
son, Sean. Lennon had made many mistakes in the raising
of his first child, Julian, who was born in 1963 at the height of Beatlemania. In attempting to raise Julian, John was often
absent and emotionally distant, as interviews from the last year of his life address candidly. Lennon had worked nonstop throughout his twenties
in the Beatles and had claimed that every moment of the band members' lives were planned
out for them, especially while they were on the touring circuit. But the early '70s hadn't allowed for much
time to slow down, either. Lennon had pursued a successful solo career
starting with the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band in 1970. He contributed music to albums by Ringo Starr,
collaborated with Elton John in 1974 on "Whatever Gets You Thru The Night," and co-wrote and
performed on David Bowie's "Fame" in 1975. With the birth of Sean, though, Lennon withdrew
from the music that had dominated his life. He claimed in his final interview with Rolling
Stone that he didn't write a single song for five years. "Stay in bed and grow your hair. Thank you." In his return to the limelight in fall of
1980, John Lennon explained that since the birth of Sean, he had taken up the role of
house husband. In an interview with Playboy, Lennon explained: "It was more important to face myself and
to face that reality than to continue a life of rock 'n' roll." The 1970s had been a decade of contrasts for
Lennon, the early years of which were characterized by the acrimony of the Beatles splitting and
the hedonism of his 18-month-long lost weekend, during which he and Yoko separated and Lennon
joined the ranks of hellraisers Harry Nillson and Keith Moon as a habitual drinker and drug-taker. So Lennon's return in 1980 after five years
of domestic normality represented the rebalancing of numerous aspects of his life and his re-emergence
to the music industry on his own terms. John and Yoko often made decisions using Tarot
cards, and one such reading in the spring of 1980 told them that John was to take a
long journey southeast. At the time, Lennon, Ono, and Sean were living
in Long Island, New York, from which the island of Bermuda lies 700 miles southeast. The family settled on Bermuda as their destination
and home for the summer of 1980, and most notably of all, John and Sean made the journey
by sea. On the journey, Lennon, as the least experienced
sailor, spent much of the time making food for the rest of the crew. But the story goes that after a battering
gale had laid many of the more experienced crew down with seasickness, Lennon took the
helm, guiding the vessel through the storm. This was reportedly a transformational and
cleansing moment for Lennon. The family encountered a stable and hospitable
environment in Bermuda, allowing Lennon to recapture his creative muse during the two
months he and his family remained on the island. It was in Bermuda that Lennon would begin
to write his first songs in five years, tragically also the final material of his career. One thing that Lennon's past half-decade had
been missing was nightlife, and the songwriter's familiarity with contemporary music had certainly
waned during his hiatus. Exploring the nightspots along Front Street
in the City of Hamilton in Bermuda, Lennon claimed that he stumbled across a young group
dancing to music he had never heard before. The song in question was "Rock Lobster" by
the B-52s, released in April 1978. In his final interview with Rolling Stone,
Lennon claimed that he had never heard the song before but said that it immediately made
him think of Yoko's music. Ono was more familiar than her husband with
the movements that had emerged in popular music in the late '70s, and the realization
that things were changing apparently gave Lennon the inspiration he needed to begin
writing music again. He started playing the guitar again the very
next day. "And uh, that's about when, uh, my life changed,
really." Not only was Bermuda important in the final
year of John Lennon's life in that it helped him return to music, but it also helped him
break new ground in his creative process. He was now writing music for the first time
in his adult life without the aid of either drugs or alcohol. One of the songs written in Bermuda addresses
this aspect of Lennon's changing habits directly. "Cleanup Time," which would be recorded in
the fall of 1980, is a title derived from a conversation Lennon had with the producer,
Jack Douglas. The two discussed how many of their friends
and acquaintances were attempting to clean up their acts after the excesses of the 1970s. Lennon came back from Bermuda re-energized
and ready to emerge from his self-imposed hiatus. Packing his first collection of new material
in half a decade, Lennon began to assemble the team of musicians and producers who would
help turn the rough ideas he outlined in Bermuda into studio takes for his return to mainstream
music. However, the newly well-balanced Lennon was
not out to prove anything. Instead, his attitude was to just enjoy the
process. Studio sessions began at New York's famous
Hit Factory studio. The sessions also included many songs written
by Yoko Ono, some of which Lennon would include on the Double Fantasy album. The nature of Lennon's comeback was writ large
in the title of his first single in five years. "(Just Like) Starting Over" is a sweet single
that adequately reflects the unity of his relationship with Ono in the years preceding
its release. The song's opening bars evoke the theme of
rebirth and the trepidation of returning to something, in this case the music scene, which
is not as familiar as it once was. The song is, in fact, constructed from three
fragments, with the first section, originally titled "My Life," emerging in 1979 as a love
song that John had penned for Yoko. Two unfinished pieces, previously known as
"Don't Be Crazy" and "The Worst Is Over" make up the remaining parts, while the song only
came together in its final form once Lennon and Ono had begun working in the studio in
New York. On release, the single peaked in the Top 10
in both the U.K. and the U.S. singles charts, marking an end to Lennon's self-imposed hiatus
and signaling that he still had a receptive following as an artist. The single was to become his biggest solo
hit in the U.S. after his death. The studio sessions in New York yielded an
album within two months, the same period of time that Lennon had spent rediscovering his
creative energies on the island of Bermuda. Double Fantasy, released November 17, 1980,
echoed the structure of how the songs were first written and shared between John and
Yoko, in which a song sung by one of them would influence the other to respond with
another song. So in the track listing, you have Lennon singing
"I'm Losing You," to which Ono responds with the song "I'm Moving On." Despite such tensions providing much of the
drama of the album, the lyrics are permeated with images of cozy domesticity and marital
bliss, which many reviewers at the time took issue with. In fact, the response to the album upon its
release was, to put it mildly, mixed, with the record's domestic themes and Lennon's
apparent happiness being bones of contention for many critics. In hindsight, however, these revealing elements
have come to show Lennon's state of mind in his final days, and tragically, Double Fantasy
seems to suggest that by 1980, Lennon may have finally found happiness. From the breakup of the Beatles in 1970, John
Lennon and Paul McCartney had had a tense and rocky relationship, beginning with the
two taking shots at one another on records and in numerous early solo interviews. Lennon had taken issue with some of the lyrics
on Paul and Linda McCartney's 1971 album Ram, which he interpreted as being about his relationship
with Yoko Ono. McCartney would later confirm to Playboy that
the song "Too Many People" was indeed about John and Yoko and that the latter's name was
in the original lyrics before being edited out. On John's side, the vicious "How Do You Sleep?"
from Imagine, released the same year as Ram, could hardly be about anyone else. By the mid- to late '70s, however, the duo
had begun to mend their friendship. The pair had reunited only a couple of times
since, once in 1974 and again in 1976, when they spent an evening together watching an
episode of Saturday Night Live in which Lorne Michaels jokingly offered the Beatles $3,000
to appear on the show. The two joked about turning up at the studio. Lennon and McCartney last spoke on John Lennon's
40th birthday, October 9, 1980, a phone call that McCartney later described as happy. On the day of his death two months later,
Lennon reportedly told journalist Dave Sholin that McCartney was, quote, "like a brother." "We have communicated over the phone in the
last year, Paul and I, often." It seems that John Lennon's claim that he
and Yoko Ono had something to say on their return wasn't just empty rhetoric. If anything, it was as if the well of words
had refilled itself in the years that Lennon had been away from the spotlight. In addition to the songs and musical ideas,
the idea that Lennon had rediscovered his voice in Bermuda is also evidenced by the
slew of interviews and public appearances that Lennon made in the months before his
death. In September, the couple gave a long interview
to Playboy that covered all aspects of their careers, from the early days to what their
working routines were like in 1980, as well as their family life and opinions about Lennon's
former bandmates and contemporaries. On Friday, December 5, 1980, three days before
his murder, Lennon was interviewed at his Upper West Side apartment by Rolling Stone
editor Jonathan Cott for a full nine hours. The interview was only published years later. Instead, Cott tragically ended up writing
Lennon's obituary, drawing on impressions of the musician from over a decade of wide-ranging
interviews and meetings. The horror of Lennon's murder, which was committed
publicly, in front of his wife, by an obsessive fan who he'd spoken to and signed a record
for earlier the same day, requires no detailed explanation. The tragedy of his death at the age of 40
in the light of what we know about his life immediately beforehand is, however, worth
thinking about. Lennon was publicly active at the time, promoting
a new album, meeting fans, and returning to the studio to work on more music when his
life was taken from him. Having taken steps to address aspects of his
life, his past behaviors, and his turn away from music in favor of family, the truth is
that perhaps, as many of his interviews in 1980 show, Lennon's life was perfectly balanced,
and he was approaching music and fame on his own terms. And the peaceful space that he had created
for himself and his family in his hiatus allowed him to think about his future, a far cry from
the Beatlemania days when life was moving fast at the behest of managers and executives. The outpouring of grief following Lennon's
murder made his final album a massive commercial success, and it eventually won the Grammy
award for Album of the Year. Lennon's death meant that the album's intimate
themes and lyrics became insights into his final months, while for many, the Grammy that
the album received stands as a memorial to an artist who just wanted to keep creating. "(Just Like) Starting Over" hit #1 in both
the U.K. and U.S. after his death, staying at the top of the Billboard 100 for five weeks.
