Week by week we're listing 5 tracks which were big music news in the charts, on your radio or even in your record collection 40 years ago, this week in 1980:
1. John Lennon - Imagine Lennon was brutally murdered outside his home in New York this week in 1980. His signature song was naturally being played everywhere.
2. The Police - De Do Do Do De Da Da Da. Sting 'n' pals' new single was the highest new entry in the charts this week, from Top 10 album Zenyatta Mondatta.
3. The Nolans -Who's Gonna Rock You. Ireland's finest siblings are still in the mood for dancing and getting even raunchier with this new single in at no.40.
4. Magazine - A Song From Under the Floorboards. From the group's live album Play which entered the lower reaches of the charts this week, only te disappear again thus guaranteeing cult status.
5. Orange Juice - Simply Thrilled Honey. Postcard release fom Glasgow newcomers highest new entry on RM indie chart this week.
Week by week we're listing 5 tracks which were big music news in the charts, on your radio or even in your record collection 40 years ago, this week in 1980:
1. Spandau Ballet - To Cut A Long Story Short. One of the defining bands of the eighties made their Top 40 debut this week with their debut single, and the highest new entry at no.18.
2. Madness - Embarrassment. The Nutty Boys are also new on the charts this week (no.31) with this track off Absolutely, allegedly about Lee Thompson's teenage sister.
3. John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him (from Double Fantasy). ABBA were straight in to the album charst at no.1 this week, while Lennon & Ono's comeback album entered at a more modest no.27. Penned and sung principally by Yoko, this track was later remixed highlighting only Lennon's vocal for the 1984 compilation album Every Man Has a Woman.
4. Bow Wow Wow - Louis Quatorze (from Your Cassette Pet). Opening track form the 'revolutionary' mini-album by Mlcolm McLaren's latest project which, as it wasn't released on vinyl, wasn't classified as an album at all, but only as an Ep and as such failed to make the singles Top 40.
5. Motels - Days Are OK. Lead singer Martha Davis got the Record Mirror cover this week, with a full feature on the band inside "on the eve of their UK tour". British audiences hardly warmed to this Blondie-esque US band however and the single made slow progress.
6. Boomtown Rats - Banana Republic. First new material from the Rats in 1980, and the lead single from new album coming in '81. This new single was a new entry at no.23 this week and would eventually reach no.3 by Christmas.
Love these photos of John & Yoko, posted over at Meet The Beatles For Real, marking the couple's wedding anniversary.
The pic shows John & Yoko during the trip to Scotland they took in June 1969 with their respective offspring, Sean and Kyoto, after all the 'honeymoon' fuss with the Hair Peace / Bag Piece stunts.
I like the way the photos show them as both 'normal' people but at the same time sort of alien to the rest of everyone else as they visit schools and other places in small Scottish communities.
Why have all these kids got matching caps?
Sadly, the happy (extended) family had a car accident later on in the trip, Golspie on July 1st to be precise, apparently due to John's rather wreckless driving...(well he was used to being driven round London in a Rolls rather than driving a mini around the highroads and low-roads of Scotland). John, Yoko and Kyoto all had to have stitches. "If you're going to have a car crash, try to arrange for it to happen in the Highlands. The hospital there was just great," Lennon quipped.
July 1st was also the date recording was start to begin for what was to become The Beatles' Abbey Road album. John didn't make it until the 9th. Naturally Yoko went with him although they had a double bed brought into the studios from Harrod's so Yoko could still get plenty of rest. She was carrying Lennon's child.
..not that being 80 years old means anything to such an active and generally marvellous person like Yoko Ono. Excellent post and pictures of Mrs John Lennon over here. May she live until 100 and beyond....
PS I know this post is a day late but yesterday i was busy with other stuff...
Yesterday was John Winston Ono Lennon's birthday, and as he was born in 1940, most mathematicians will tell you he would have been 71 years old, if he hadn't been so brutally shot and killed in 1980, when he was 40.
Loads of people around and the world will have remembered him yesterday (oops..) by playing Imagine, but I listened to The Wedding Album instead.
John and Yoko got married in Gibraltar on 20th March, 1969.
Funnily enough his old mucker Paul McCartney went and got married for the third time on the same day as aforementioned birthday, which is a bit in bad taste if you ask me. I wonder if a) he did it on purpose as a way of remembering the man who made him famous in the first place, b) a way of distracting people from the fact that it was Lennon's birthday so as not to get all the limelight, or even c) he'd forgotten it was his bloomin' birthday. Whatever it was here's a couple of pics of the happy couple thanks to the very excellent Beatles photo blog. She's quite nice isn't she?
John Lennon's second solo album Imagine is 40 years old this month. Released on 9th September 1971 in the US and a month later in the UK, Imagine for many represents Lennon's best solo work, or at least second to the initial post-scream therapy album Plastic Ono Band released a year earlier.
Yet despite it being arguably his best, Imagine is by no means an easy album: Lennon covers a range of musical styles and subject matter as you're ruthlessly thrown from one side of his personality to another. The timeless title track opens proceedings but then you're thrown into the faux-country/bluegrass of the light-hearted Crippled Inside, then back again into sloppy ballad Jealous Guy, a song which dated back to Beatles times and would be covered so masterfully a decade later by Roxy Music. Gimme Some Truth and I Don't Want to Be a Soldier again tackle political and pacifist themes, which would be his main preoccupations in the successive New York City album. There's more soul searching from primal-therapy in How? and It's So Hard and even time for an alleged dig at former bandmate Paul McCartney (later denied) in How Do You Sleep? The only really poor moment is the closing Oh Yoko!, a naive attempt at a sing-along tribute to his famous wife, but which works out an being about 2 minutes too long.
But put it all together and Imagine works - it's John Lennon all over. Fervent political activist one minute, clown the next; from angry young man to dedicated lover and husband, from world weary angst to profound introspection. Imagine, and Lennon, is all of this
The Imagine album also marked Lennon's - and Yoko's - transition from the UK to the USA, a place he would soon consider his artistic home. Initail tracks were recorded in his home in Ascot, and in part at Abbey Road, yet the album was completed in New York's Record Plant, with final production by Phil Spector. By September 1971 Lennon had left the UK with UK, never to return.
Although the title track became an immediate hit in the US, reaching number 3 in the Billboard 100, amazingly it was not released as a single in the UK until 1975 to promote the Shaved Fish "best of" album, released to fill the gap after Lennon's famous retirement from the music scene. Its message of universal love has become the anthem for just about every single world peace cause that has existed since, and despite hundreds of cover versions and live performances, the simplicity and sincerity of Lennon's original has never been equalled.
The BBC's flagship arts show Imagine returns to BBC One at the end of this month with a couple of interesting episodes for John Lennon fans. On Tuesday 12th July, Imagine: Lennon In Limbo delves into Lennon's life following his move to New York City, as well as his relationship with Yoko Ono. Featuring never-before-heard studio recordings from the Double Fantasy sessions in 1980 and never-before-seen outtakes from Lennon in concert and his home movies, the film reveals a wealth of new insights. The following week on the 17th Imagine: Harry Nilsson – The Missing Beatle, focusses on the story of the riotous life and music of Harry Nilsson. Nilsson, a friend and hero of Lennon's, was one of the most successful, influential, but least known, songwriters of his generation (it says 'ere). They had a, er, few beers and laughs together during Lennon's time in LA when he had a bit of a "lost weekend", being separated from Yoko for 18 months in 1973-74.
...which might not be such a big deal, unless you're talking about stuff coming from John Lennon's very own home studio at his Tittenhurst Park home near Ascot, UK. Lennon built the studio around 1970 after his departure from The Beatles and went on to record his Plastic Ono Band and Imagine albums there, before sodding off to NYC. The gear is to be auctioned off by recording equipment specialist seller MJQ Ltd who are also putting an Abbey Road mixing desk up for grabs. Lennon's microphones alone are expected to fetch around 5,000 quid each. Don't all shout at once.
Bizarrely a coffee percolator owned by Starr who later acquired Lennon's home is also being sold. Sadly the Tittenhurst toilet (aka Lennon Loo) was already sold off last year for £9,500.
In October 1980 John Lennon's comeback was about as warmly received as Yoko Ono's presence in a Beatles recording studio in the late 60s. Amongst the emerging new wave sounds in the shiny new decade, Lennon's anachronistic (Just Like) Starting Over with it's rock n roll ballad style, faux-Elvis/Orbison vocals and "doo-wap" backing just spelt out "boring old fart". Lennon & Ono had left the UK in 1971 to settle in New York effectively 'betraying' Blighty and British fans. And while contemporaries such as Bowie, Brian Ferry and Elton John had all moved on and progressed, for many Lennon's recluse since 1975 had meant out of sight out of mind. That said, the comeback single made a decent enough entry into the UK charts in November, gradually creeping up to the top 10 before dropping heavily after just 4 weeks. It was radio-friendly and Lennon's enthusiam for his return and the new album trickled through in the odd press interview. David Hepworth's 3 out of 10 review in Smash Hits was both scathing and brutally honest, ominously commenting that "Lennon needn't bother about a follow-up til 1999".
After Mark Chapman brutally shot and killed John Lennon on 8th December 1980, sales of the single and parent album rocketed and the opening "our life together is so precious..together" took on a whole new meaning.
Whatever you thought of of Lennon, Yoko or their Double Fantasy, (Just Like) Starting Over was, in hindsight, a cracking comeback single and a fine example of the Lennon genius. The tinkling bell at the start echoes and lighten up the opening chimes of "Mother" (bringing it all "full circle" in Lennon's own words), the 'let's start again' message is universal and multi-purpose, the rock n roll pastiche is note perfect and the treated voice of Yoko reciting poetry in the coda makes it just that little more interesting and modern.
The John Lennon 70th birthday tribute will get started after the summer with the issue eight of Lennon’s classic solo albums and other recordings digitally remastered from his original mixes for a global catalogue initiative commemorating the music legend’s birthday, on October 9th 2010. Overseen by Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s “Gimme Some Truth” campaign will launch on 4 October with the worldwide release of eight remastered studio albums and several newly-compiled titles. The albums have been digitally remastered from Lennon’s original mixes by Yoko Ono and a team of engineers led by Allan Rouse at EMI Music’s Abbey Road Studios in London and by George Marino at Avatar Studios in New York. All of the remastered titles will be packaged in digisleeves with replicated original album art and booklets with photos and new liner notes by noted British music journalist Paul Du Noyer. The albums to be reissued are:
· John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970) · Imagine (1971) · Some Time In New York City (1972) · Mind Games (1973) · Walls and Bridges (1974) · Rock ‘n’ Roll (1975) · Double Fantasy Stripped Down (2010) / Double Fantasy (1980) · Milk and Honey (1984)
The 'Stripped Down' version of Double Fantasy is a newly produced and remixed version of Lennon's 1980 album. Says Yoko: “Double Fantasy Stripped Down really allows us to focus our attention on John’s amazing vocals. By stripping down some of the instrumentation the power of the songs shines through with an enhanced clarity. It was whilst working on the new version of this album that I was hit hardest emotionally, as this was the last album John released before his passing." Aww bless.
..and there's more... Power To The People: The Hits gathers 15 of Lennon’s most popular songs, and will be available as a 15-track single-disc and digital package, and as an Experience Edition with additional content.
A new film on the teenage years of John Lennon entitled Nowhere Boy has been chosen as the closing film for this year's annual London Film Festival. The film, starring Aaron Johnson in the role of the young Lennon and Kirstin Scott Thomas as Aunt Mimi, is directed by Sam-Taylor Wood longtime collaborator with the Pet Shop Boys (see earlier LIM post). Screenplay is by Matt Greenhalgh, writer of Control, Anton Corbijn's film on the life of Joy Division's Ian Curtis. UK general releases for Nowhere Boy is set for Christmas Day 2009.
the young John Lennon plays ukelele: would go on to bigger things.
