The secret vice John Lennon indulged in during the making of ‘Double Fantasy’
By 1980, John Lennon had cleaned himself up. After a long history of drug use that included heroin in the late 1960s and cocaine throughout the 1970s, Lennon decided that becoming a father again would be the impetus for a healthier lifestyle. While he still smoked cigarettes, Lennon largely dispensed his drug use after his son Sean was born in 1975. But that didn’t mean he didn’t still have his vices.
When Lennon decided it was time to return to music in 1980, he had established a routine. As a way to avoid major publicity, Lennon and Yoko Ono would book overnight sessions at The Hit Factory in New York City, not far from their apartment building, The Dakota. The personnel were under strict orders to keep the sessions from the press, but a few trusted journalists were in the know.
One was Los Angeles Times rock critic Robert Hilburn, who attended a few of the sessions. While mostly acting as a passive observer, Hilburn directly interacted with Lennon on a few occasions, as he states in his book Corn Flakes With John Lennon and Other Tales From a Rock ‘n’ Roll Life. One of Hilburn’s stories related back to a vice that Lennon wasn’t able to kick during the recordings.
“One thing that troubled me during the Double Fantasy all-night recording sessions: the way John would slip from time to time into an adjoining lounge,” Hilburn wrote. “The first thing that came to mind was drugs because I was so used to seeing musicians pass around bowls of cocaine with the casualness of M&Ms.”
“John had had drug problems earlier in his life, and I feared he had relapsed – despite all his talk about feeling healthier than ever,” Hilburn adds. “Maybe the pressure of being back in the studio was greater than he was letting on. At one point, I happened into the lounge and saw John at the far end of the narrow room. He was reaching for something on the cabinet shelf, and my first instinct was to go back into the studio so I wouldn’t violate his privacy.”
“But he spotted me and called me over, putting his finger up to his lips in a signal to be quiet. When I was next to him, he reached into the cabinet again and pulled out something wrapped in a towel,” Hilburn claimed. “‘Want some?’ he asked. ‘Just don’t tell Mother’, he said with a conspiratorial look. ‘She doesn’t want me doing this anymore.'”
“As he opened the towel, I had to laugh. John Lennon’s private stash turned out to be a giant-sized Hershey bar,” Hilburn concludes. “He broke off a chunk for me and one for himself. Holding his piece in a toast, John smiled and said, ‘Good to see you again.'”
