“A touch gruesome”: The last song Paul McCartney recorded while John Lennon was alive
John Lennon‘s death on December 8th, 1980, changed the course of cultural history in a truly seismic way.
Lennon was a larger figure than the pop-idol action figure he emerged as. By 1980, he was a philanthropist and innovator whose creativity extended beyond music and placed him as a sort of transcendental figure that influenced the makeup of modern life. To many, he was a saviour and to a select few, a danger.
Such a presence resulted in one of the most tragic moments in history, as a maniacal Mark David Chapman murdered the Beatle in broad daylight, in some twisted pursuit of worldwide notoriety. It would rightly send a shockwave through the world, not least his former bandmates, who were now confronted with the mortal danger of their worldwide fame, while simultaneously grappling with the idea that their fearless leader would simply never be seen again.
Their music would now exist in the binary worlds of before and after Lennon, a fact that was more poignant for McCartney, whose most culturally revered work existed in the former.
As the relentless songwriter he was, it wasn’t surprising that Macca was working on an idea on the day of Lennon’s death. In a rather bizarre twist of fate, the record he was working on, ‘Ode To A Koala Bear’, was in fact a duet, eventually performed by Michael Jackson, but somehow fitting that it was with another artist in mind, given his songwriting career started with his unrivalled partner Lennon.
“That day was another regular session day,” his drummer, Paul Robinson, remembered. “I think I was booked from 2pm to 5-6pm, but as always, with the possibility that the session would go on a bit later, and as it was for Paul, you made yourself available, of course.
He continued, “We put the track down with Paul playing piano, me on kit. We left the studio that evening at about 9pm, so I think that meant 4pm New York time. It was the same day John was killed. So, it may be a touch gruesome, but this track, which Paul told me was about one of his kids’ toys, who were also there with Linda, was the last track Paul recorded while John was still alive.”
Much like McCartney, Lennon’s fearless creativity also put him in the studio that day. While Macca was laying down parts for Jackson to play, Lennon was providing guitar parts for Yoko Ono’s song ‘Walking on Thin Ice’.
There’s almost an eerie yet comforting sense of poetry in the fact that both musicians were collaborating with other artists in the studio, on completely separate instruments – while McCartney played piano, Lennon focused on the guitar and laid down melodies that would coexist.
Because after The Beatles’ break-up, Lennon’s tragic death would never allow them to play together again, and so the only sense of musical justice that came from the event is the fact that both musicians occupied different ends of the studio process on the exact same day and in some bizarre universe, musically communicated with each other one last time.
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