The death-defying trip that convinced John Lennon to play music again
For most of the late 1970s, it looked like John Lennon had permanently retired from making any new music. Although he may have been the most prolific songwriter of all of The Beatles during his time in the group, the latter half of the decade saw him taking a break to enjoy a domestic life. He opted to become the best father he could to his newborn son, Sean. While it was going to take something significant to get Lennon back into music, he ended up cheating death before returning to the studio.
Then again, Lennon’s solo career had already taken some drastic turns before he had decided to settle down. When working on albums like Walls and Bridges and Rock and Roll, Lennon was enjoying what was commonly referred to as his “lost weekend”, often burying himself in a bottle of booze during sessions and becoming more distraught about benign separated from Yoko Ono.
By the time he returned to New York City, though, it was clear that Lennon’s partying days were finally catching up with him. After jamming with Elton John for a show at Madison Square Garden, a chance encounter with Ono before the show led to the pair returning to each other and starting a family.
Even though Paul McCartney may have been riding high off the success of Wings and George Harrison was crafting spiritual masterpieces, Lennon was more inclined to bake bread around the house, serving as the domestic parent while Yoko handled most of their finances. Once he decided to leave the confines of his Dakota apartment, Lennon had a sudden urge to learn to sail.
Getting in touch with his English roots, Lennon bordered a sailboat bound for Bermuda, only to find himself in hurricane-like conditions before he docked. With the rest of the crew developing acute seasickness, Lennon was the only one to steer the ship, leading to him shouting sea shanties as he made his way through death-defying waters.
By the time he found himself on dry land, though, something activated in Lennon’s brain that made him want to write again. When talking about his experience through the massive storm, Lennon recalled, “I had the time of my life. I was so centred after the experience at sea, that I was tuned in or whatever with the cosmos, and all the songs came.”
Instead of the political material he was used to writing, Lennon wrote tracks that reflected the life he created with Ono. After playing several tracks to Ono over the phone, the pair began to send songs as musical notes to each other, leading to Lennon making the record Double Fantasy based on their experiences.
Operating as a dialogue between a husband and wife, much of the album balances Lennon’s state of mind in Bermuda and back in New York with Yoko, including using steel drum on the track ‘Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)’. While Lennon often looked inward for inspiration in his legendary songs, it took a natural disaster for him to get back to the sentimental side of himself.