I had no idea, though, about the James Taylor meets Mark Chapman story, which sounds fascinating as well as chilling. Whilst I’m sure that Chapman would not have been driven to remove dear gentle old James from the gene pool for being a “phoney”, it is certainly true that had he indeed altered course and slain Taylor in lieu of Lennon, “You’ve Got A Friend” would have been number one instead of “(Just Like) Starting Over”. For all of us who have an unhealthy interest in the pop chart, this is of significant importance.

On reflection, it’s probably just as well that Roger Whittaker wasn’t staying at or near the Dakota or it might well have been the last farewell in every sense!

I don’t know whether this was a well-known story already, but I learned the other day that another music legend, James Taylor, had also encountered Mark Chapman that week:
“It seems amazing to me now, but I lived in the building one up from the Dakota and I heard him shot – five, just as quick as you could pull the trigger, about five explosions. And [Chapman] had button-holed me in the tube station, the subway stop, right in front of 72nd Street the day before. The guy had sort of pinned me to the wall and was glistening with maniacal sweat and talking some freak-speak about what he was going to do and his stuff … and he was going to get in touch with John Lennon. And it was surreal to actually have contact with the guy 24 hours before he shot John.”

“One of the reasons why Rock’n’Roll could exist in the first place was JD Salinger’s book.”

Too much credit. If ‘Catcher’ hadn’t been written we would still have Rock ‘n’ Roll. Good book for those who feel like ‘outsiders’ though.

Whenever somebody of note checks out, Rosie, Erithian and myself start texting away with our mini obits. It’s normally a race to see who can get in first:

Rosie: J D Salinger caught at last in the rye.
Erithian: catcher in the rye = caught in the slips.
Waldo: I bet Lennon’s beating the shit out of him as we speak.
Erithian: and Reagan joining in!

RIP, JD. One man. One book.

I don’t know what Lennon (would have) made of UK punk. Living in New York he could have seen any number of the US wave of bands. I suspect his response to UK punk would have been ambivalent at best: “you can count me out/in” but hope he might have responded more positively to the Ramones, Blondie or Patti Smith

“Heathrow Airport was teeming with reporters, photographers and thousands of screaming fans to witness the unexpected return of John Lennon to Britain. Striding confidently through the Arrivals gate, the Beatles star and peace campaigner, 36, was smiling, tanned and besuited, with wife Yoko Ono and their two-year-old son Sean in tow, happily signing autographs – though some fans did notice the SEX T-shirt being discreetly worn under his expensive-looking suit.

Lennon admitted that the “punk rock” boom had been the decisive factor in influencing his return to the UK, declaring that it was “like the Cavern all over again, but without Brian making us all behave nicely.” Later that evening both John and Yoko were to be seen in London’s Roxy club, “pogoing” energetically to controversial new girl punk band the Slits (“Yoko’s astonished that her musical style has finally caught on with the kids”) and speaking intensely with Joe Strummer and Mick Jones of the highly-rated punk band the Clash. It is understood that Lennon has now entered into talks with the group with a view to producing their debut album, scheduled for release on Parlophone later this year.”

Yes, the above should have happened, but didn’t; instead the 36-year-old househusband stayed at home in the Dakota, baking bread, raising Sean, spinning the same old Jerry Lee and Eddie sides he’d spun in his Toxteth bedroom, being sarcastic and dismissive of the Pistols and others. But above all it should have happened because if Lennon had returned to Britain he might still be alive. He took too much for granted, and trusted too much; tentatively re-emerging in suit and short back and sides – looking for all the world like a young Peter Sellers – with a nice and reflective album about the renewed love he had for his wife, he thought it could still be Hamburg in ’61, that he could still walk around New York freely, unprotected by bodyguards, unsealed in bulletproof limousines. He never quite lost that naivety; thus the child inside him was killed by another outside(r) child who couldn’t forgive him for not having made “Revolution #10,” for not still being on the frontline of protest and action, for being a “phoney,” unmasked by the gross crime of wanting to become a middle-aged adult instead of being a child all of his life (“We have grown”).

In this way the critics who uniformly slaughtered Double Fantasy at the time of its release were not that far removed from Mark Chapman; they bellowed bile at Lennon for not being Weller, for not coming back with a hitherto unimagined Joy Division/B52s/Wire fusion, or fission. But how did they, or Chapman, know that he eventually wouldn’t? There was the American market to consider; Double Fantasy was never going to be dreamt up with Martin Hannett at Strawberry Studios. But, as I said, it was also a tentative re-entry into the world after half a decade of deliberate silence, a wink of “remember me? Are you still interested? Well, we’re still happy, if not happier.”

The school bell which begins “Starting Over” sounds like a resigned sequel to the “1-2-3-4” which began “I Saw Her Standing There” at the other end of my life. But the resignation is desired, and Lennon sounds satisfied. Fuck the history and the past, “let’s take a chance and fly away somewhere alone”…even as by doing so he was flying back into the public consciousness.

“Starting Over” is a straightforward mid-tempo rock ‘n’ roll ballad, with period echoes courtesy of producer Jack Douglas, and Lennon does indeed appear refreshed, even mischievous with his Presley trembles (“It’s been too long since we took the time”) and the genuinely joyous yelps he makes on the line “It’s LIKE we both are falling in love again.” He is rushing nothing, wants to go back to “the early days”; but there is also a wistfulness about his tone, as demonstrated in the final “let’s take a chance and fly away somewhere” where his voice is phased and synthesised into momentary non-existence. Somewhere away from life?

Then the music starts again, with airport announcements of flights and departure times, and Lennon bows out; this is the life I want, and I’m off to live it, and you can come with me if you like – but note those increasingly orgasmic yelps (cf. “Revolution #1”) in which he indulges at the fadeout. Don’t take me for granted; I’ve still got some new tricks to play.

On a personal level, I associate “Starting Over” and Lennon’s assassination with my Oxford interview, since the news had broken on the Tuesday morning that I was due to have the interview – and even in the misty early winter sunshine of Lady Margaret Hall I have never, before or since, seen so many people shellshocked, stunned; the only one who didn’t seem to be was the tutor who interviewed me, who immediately asked me (seeing as one of my entrance examination essays was to do with Keats) the second I entered his study: “Lennon or Keats?” I instinctly and immediately shot back “But where does that leave Cole Porter?” Under such circumstances are futures decided.

I also recall the train journey from Glasgow Central to Oxford that Monday, down through the dark, rainy and oppressive remnants of the industrial North, cathedrals of sacrificed steel, drowned fires, and associate quite a lot of the darker chart hits of December 1980 with that journey – UB40’s “The Earth Dies Screaming,” the Specials’ “Do Nothing,” the Stray Cats’ “Runaway Boys” – and certainly there seemed to prevail a cloak of impending catastrophe. As someone in the NME letters pages of the time put it: “first today’s music dies with Ian Curtis, then the father of pop dies.” Meanwhile I got to go to Oxford; and a quarter-century later I listen to this song about starting over, about “our love” being “so special,” about the need to take a chance and fly away, the airport tannoy announcements – and the song means something different to me now, as I am sure its author intended it to sound.

And then came that morning. I was back at work, doing computery things for a printing company, and running late. Dave Lee Travis was playing Beatles records back to back on the morning Radio 1 show but I never did get to hear why before I had to go out. I asked my office colleagues what was going on and neither of them knew. Then Gary the dedicated Bowie fan from the design studio came in. Did he know? Indeed he did. Lennon’s been shot. Terrible news.

And it really did feel like the day the music died. I don’t remember the demise of Buddy Holly but I knew at this moment what it would be like. Of course, one always knew that of all the Beatles John would be the one to go violently, but all the same I think we all felt that the Beatles were forever, even if they were no longer an item.

It has extra resonance for me. I was in a marital and domestic rut and I was unhappy there. When Lennon died I knew the game was up. Something very apt, which we won’t officially be discussing but I bet we will, would soon mark the beginning of the next phase of my life. But for now, well, we were all Yoko that day.

given how things turned out, “cut piece” shows that BEFORE she met lennon, she totally understood mark chapman — a meeting r.meltzer has hinted actually started life as a fluxus project (kaprow: “yr cute yoko! go bag a beatle!”)

yoko was great till she met lennon — i don’t think her intelligence is analytical, certainly not self-analytical, and (given that her best pieces work by virtue of the smallness their reach, i think her conceptual intuition is massively swamped by non-comprehension of her own fame (cf my yada yada above, on lennon’s increasing uselessness once he’d learned to game all his “opponents”)

(“Elstree” is better than any solo Beatles single, I say)

#44 – I saw The Guardian at the station today, and fell about laughing. “TODAY: free Xmas gift-wrap designed by Yoko Ono. Tomorrow: Sienna Miller”. The Guardian’s always had a certain lack of self-awareness, but it’s getting out of hand these days.

Anyway, unfolding my free gift, I see it is a bit of white paper which says “IMAGINE” and “PEACE” on it, in differently-sized letters. Remember, the fear of being seen as a philistine is what these people shaft you with…

There is some ‘celebrity gift wrap’ by Yoko in the Guardian today: I’d forgotten it was the anniversary until Erithian mentioned it, so serendipity that we’re discussing it, rather than plan.

She doesn’t award a single of the week, in what is a very undistinguished-looking week. Also reviewed are;

Buzzcocks – Strange Thing
Buggles – Elstree
The B52s – Strobe Light
Rockpile – Teacher Teacher
Joan Armatrading – Simon

Looking at my 1980 NMEs I see that ‘Double Fantasy’ is reviewed in the same week as ‘Sound Affects’ and ‘Gaucho’, two albums which really are serious integrated works, where you enter into a distinctive world and every song matters (‘Autoamerican’ is out that week, too). This must have seemed incredibly small beer in November 1980. Events of December 1980 meant that people grabbed the closest piece of Lennon product to hand, but this is no way to remember him, 29 years after that.

‘Watching The Wheels’ is quite good, though.