The murder of John Lennon in December 1980 sent shock waves around the world.
1980 was also a crucial year for Lennon, who'd emerged from a five-year hiatus, ready to
make music once again.
This is what the final 12 months of John Lennon's life were like.
In 1975, five tumultuous years after the break-up of the Beatles, Lennon and his second wife,
Yoko Ono, withdrew from the public eye.
This was to concentrate on raising his second son, Sean.
Lennon had made many mistakes in the raising of his first child, Julian, who was born in
1963 at the height of Beatlemania.
In attempting to raise Julian, John was often absent and emotionally distant, as interviews
from the last year of his life address candidly.
Lennon had worked nonstop throughout his twenties in the Beatles and had claimed that every
moment of the band members' lives were planned out for them, especially while they were on
the touring circuit.
But the early '70s hadn't allowed for much time to slow down, either.
Lennon had pursued a successful solo career starting with the John Lennon/Plastic Ono
Band in 1970.
He contributed music to albums by Ringo Starr, collaborated with Elton John in 1974 on "Whatever
Gets You Thru The Night," and co-wrote and performed on David Bowie's "Fame" in 1975.
With the birth of Sean, though, Lennon withdrew from the music that had dominated his life.
He claimed in his final interview with Rolling Stone that he didn't write a single song for
five years.
"Stay in bed and grow your hair.
Thank you."
In his return to the limelight in fall of 1980, John Lennon explained that since the
birth of Sean, he had taken up the role of house husband.
In an interview with Playboy, Lennon explained:
"It was more important to face myself and to face that reality than to continue a life
of rock 'n' roll."
The 1970s had been a decade of contrasts for Lennon, the early years of which were characterized
by the acrimony of the Beatles splitting and the hedonism of his 18-month-long lost weekend,
during which he and Yoko separated and Lennon joined the ranks of hellraisers Harry Nillson
and Keith Moon as a habitual drinker and drug-taker.
So Lennon's return in 1980 after five years of domestic normality represented the rebalancing
of numerous aspects of his life and his re-emergence to the music industry on his own terms.
John and Yoko often made decisions using Tarot cards, and one such reading in the spring
of 1980 told them that John was to take a long journey southeast.
At the time, Lennon, Ono, and Sean were living in Long Island, New York, from which the island
of Bermuda lies 700 miles southeast.
The family settled on Bermuda as their destination and home for the summer of 1980, and most
notably of all, John and Sean made the journey by sea.
On the journey, Lennon, as the least experienced sailor, spent much of the time making food
for the rest of the crew.
But the story goes that after a battering gale had laid many of the more experienced
crew down with seasickness, Lennon took the helm, guiding the vessel through the storm.
This was reportedly a transformational and cleansing moment for Lennon.
The family encountered a stable and hospitable environment in Bermuda, allowing Lennon to
recapture his creative muse during the two months he and his family remained on the island.
It was in Bermuda that Lennon would begin to write his first songs in five years, tragically
also the final material of his career.
One thing that Lennon's past half-decade had been missing was nightlife, and the songwriter's
familiarity with contemporary music had certainly waned during his hiatus.
Exploring the nightspots along Front Street in the City of Hamilton in Bermuda, Lennon
claimed that he stumbled across a young group dancing to music he had never heard before.
The song in question was "Rock Lobster" by the B-52s, released in April 1978.
In his final interview with Rolling Stone, Lennon claimed that he had never heard the
song before but said that it immediately made him think of Yoko's music.
Ono was more familiar than her husband with the movements that had emerged in popular
music in the late '70s, and the realization that things were changing apparently gave
Lennon the inspiration he needed to begin writing music again.
He started playing the guitar again the very next day.
"And uh, that's about when, uh, my life changed, really."
Not only was Bermuda important in the final year of John Lennon's life in that it helped
him return to music, but it also helped him break new ground in his creative process.
He was now writing music for the first time in his adult life without the aid of either
drugs or alcohol.
One of the songs written in Bermuda addresses this aspect of Lennon's changing habits directly.
"Cleanup Time," which would be recorded in the fall of 1980, is a title derived from
a conversation Lennon had with the producer, Jack Douglas.
The two discussed how many of their friends and acquaintances were attempting to clean
up their acts after the excesses of the 1970s.
Lennon came back from Bermuda re-energized and ready to emerge from his self-imposed
hiatus.
Packing his first collection of new material in half a decade, Lennon began to assemble
the team of musicians and producers who would help turn the rough ideas he outlined in Bermuda
into studio takes for his return to mainstream music.
However, the newly well-balanced Lennon was not out to prove anything.
Instead, his attitude was to just enjoy the process.
Studio sessions began at New York's famous Hit Factory studio.
The sessions also included many songs written by Yoko Ono, some of which Lennon would include
on the Double Fantasy album.
The nature of Lennon's comeback was writ large in the title of his first single in five years.
"(Just Like) Starting Over" is a sweet single that adequately reflects the unity of his
relationship with Ono in the years preceding its release.
The song's opening bars evoke the theme of rebirth and the trepidation of returning to
something, in this case the music scene, which is not as familiar as it once was.
The song is, in fact, constructed from three fragments, with the first section, originally
titled "My Life," emerging in 1979 as a love song that John had penned for Yoko.
Two unfinished pieces, previously known as "Don't Be Crazy" and "The Worst Is Over" make
up the remaining parts, while the song only came together in its final form once Lennon
and Ono had begun working in the studio in New York.
On release, the single peaked in the Top 10 in both the U.K. and the U.S. singles charts,
marking an end to Lennon's self-imposed hiatus and signaling that he still had a receptive
following as an artist.
The single was to become his biggest solo hit in the U.S. after his death.
The studio sessions in New York yielded an album within two months, the same period of
time that Lennon had spent rediscovering his creative energies on the island of Bermuda.
Double Fantasy, released November 17, 1980, echoed the structure of how the songs were
first written and shared between John and Yoko, in which a song sung by one of them
would influence the other to respond with another song.
So in the track listing, you have Lennon singing "I'm Losing You," to which Ono responds with
the song "I'm Moving On."
Despite such tensions providing much of the drama of the album, the lyrics are permeated
with images of cozy domesticity and marital bliss, which many reviewers at the time took
issue with.
In fact, the response to the album upon its release was, to put it mildly, mixed, with
the record's domestic themes and Lennon's apparent happiness being bones of contention
for many critics.
In hindsight, however, these revealing elements have come to show Lennon's state of mind in
his final days, and tragically, Double Fantasy seems to suggest that by 1980, Lennon may
have finally found happiness.
From the breakup of the Beatles in 1970, John Lennon and Paul McCartney had had a tense
and rocky relationship, beginning with the two taking shots at one another on records
and in numerous early solo interviews.
Lennon had taken issue with some of the lyrics on Paul and Linda McCartney's 1971 album Ram,
which he interpreted as being about his relationship with Yoko Ono.
McCartney would later confirm to Playboy that the song "Too Many People" was indeed about
John and Yoko and that the latter's name was in the original lyrics before being edited
out.
On John's side, the vicious "How Do You Sleep?" from Imagine, released the same year as Ram,
could hardly be about anyone else.
By the mid- to late '70s, however, the duo had begun to mend their friendship.
The pair had reunited only a couple of times since, once in 1974 and again in 1976, when
they spent an evening together watching an episode of Saturday Night Live in which Lorne
Michaels jokingly offered the Beatles $3,000 to appear on the show.
The two joked about turning up at the studio.
Lennon and McCartney last spoke on John Lennon's 40th birthday, October 9, 1980, a phone call
that McCartney later described as happy.
On the day of his death two months later, Lennon reportedly told journalist Dave Sholin
that McCartney was, quote, "like a brother."
"We have communicated over the phone in the last year, Paul and I, often."
It seems that John Lennon's claim that he and Yoko Ono had something to say on their
return wasn't just empty rhetoric.
If anything, it was as if the well of words had refilled itself in the years that Lennon
had been away from the spotlight.
In addition to the songs and musical ideas, the idea that Lennon had rediscovered his
voice in Bermuda is also evidenced by the slew of interviews and public appearances
that Lennon made in the months before his death.
In September, the couple gave a long interview to Playboy that covered all aspects of their
careers, from the early days to what their working routines were like in 1980, as well
as their family life and opinions about Lennon's former bandmates and contemporaries.
On Friday, December 5, 1980, three days before his murder, Lennon was interviewed at his
Upper West Side apartment by Rolling Stone editor Jonathan Cott for a full nine hours.
The interview was only published years later.
Instead, Cott tragically ended up writing Lennon's obituary, drawing on impressions
of the musician from over a decade of wide-ranging interviews and meetings.
The horror of Lennon's murder, which was committed publicly, in front of his wife, by an obsessive
fan who he'd spoken to and signed a record for earlier the same day, requires no detailed
explanation.
The tragedy of his death at the age of 40 in the light of what we know about his life
immediately beforehand is, however, worth thinking about.
Lennon was publicly active at the time, promoting a new album, meeting fans, and returning to
the studio to work on more music when his life was taken from him.
Having taken steps to address aspects of his life, his past behaviors, and his turn away
from music in favor of family, the truth is that perhaps, as many of his interviews in
1980 show, Lennon's life was perfectly balanced, and he was approaching music and fame on his
own terms.
And the peaceful space that he had created for himself and his family in his hiatus allowed
him to think about his future, a far cry from the Beatlemania days when life was moving
fast at the behest of managers and executives.
The outpouring of grief following Lennon's murder made his final album a massive commercial
success, and it eventually won the Grammy award for Album of the Year.
Lennon's death meant that the album's intimate themes and lyrics became insights into his
final months, while for many, the Grammy that the album received stands as a memorial to
an artist who just wanted to keep creating.
"(Just Like) Starting Over" hit #1 in both the U.K. and U.S. after his death, staying
at the top of the Billboard 100 for five weeks.