“John’s last recording”: The final song John Lennon ever made
No artist goes up to their instrument thinking it’s the last time they’ll ever play it. Most people are usually worried about getting whatever idea they have in their head on paper, and that means finding the right place with the right instrument for everything to come together. While John Lennon didn’t have much time left when working on the album Double Fantasy, the last song he recorded is far more bittersweet when looking back on how everything would play out.
Because when Lennon was assassinated, no one saw him faltering as a solo artist. If anything, he had only begun his ascent once again after years away, and now that he had settled into domestic bliss in New York City when raising his son, Sean, and his comeback album in 1980 was supposed to be him making the best of life that was now dominated by changing nappies and baking bread.
If anything, this should have been a complete shock, considering where Lennon had been. Whereas Paul McCartney had settled into marital bliss pretty quickly following his departure from The Beatles, it took his songwriting partner over a decade to stop his political swaggering in favour of making something far more intimate.
But while Lennon was looking forward to seeing what the future held for him, a few gunshots brought all of that to an end in December 1980. The former Beatle had already been working on guitar parts for Yoko Ono’s ‘Walking on Thin Ice’, but even at the time of his passing, he was still envisioning what the follow-up to Double Fantasy would look like.
Despite us getting that record in Milk and Honey in 1982, it’s clear that some pieces weren’t quite ready to be fleshed out. A lot of what Lennon created for the album was nothing more than a bunch of demos, with the ballad ‘Grow Old With Me’ being the last fully fleshed-out song that he recorded during his lifetime.
When Yoko Ono talked about going through most of his demo tapes, she said that the cassette of what Lennon had to work with was the last recorded song that he wrote at the Dakota, stating, “All of them disappeared since then except the one on the record. It may be that it was meant to be this way, since the version that was left to us was John’s last recording. The one John and I recorded together in our bedroom with a piano and a rhythm box.”
While we’re not hearing the version that Lennon probably intended, it’s still a stunning piece of magic from his final days. Compared to the other ballads from this time, like ‘Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy),’ it’s even more heartwrenching hearing Lennon asking for God to bless his love with Yoko and how he looks forward to what the future holds for him once Sean is fully grown.
That reality is something that most of us never got to see, but when George Martin added a string section to some of the special editions of the track, this was more than any other syrupy Lennon ballad. This was a track that could have gone toe-to-toe with ‘Yesterday’ as one of The Beatles’ finest works
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