Borrowed Time – Lennon’s last decade

Muninman says:

No mention of close friend and confidant to J&Y Elliot Mintz. That might be because he has finally written his memoirs entitled ‘We all shine on’.
Personally, I think its important that the Lennono mythologizing of the reconciliation and the househusband period was challenged by the likes of Seamon and Rosen’s summary of the Lennon diaries. There was some weird stuff at that time for sure.

Paul Murphy says:

One thing the documentary might do, is to examine the semi-myth, still being repeated here, that John went into musical retirement just to raise his son. There is no doubt that that played a part, but, how big a part, really? Firstly, John did not have a contract, and there were not many offers coming in, and nothing to match his stature. No one was making big overtures to anyone but Paul. George and Ringo were to be dropped within a couple oy years, Ringo as an individual and George via Dark Horse. None of John’s albums were selling much above break-even since ‘Imagine’. As John himself said, regarding the contractual obligation ‘Shaved Fish’ – “nobody could give a damn at the record companies because they weren’t… you know, that big [hits]. Big enough for them to be interested.”

Even if he had had a record contract, ‘Rock N’ Roll’ and ‘Shaved Fish’ were still fresh, so there would have been no imperative for a new release for at least a year, more than enough time to “raise the child.” But what raising? Any parent will tell you that the first year is sleep, feed, burp. In fact, it could well be argued that John went back to work – “this housewife wants a job” – just at the time when Sean would have been looking to engage actively with a man of his father’s intelligence, scholastically, artistically, and playfully.
Given that when John WAS working, his work rate was not exactly onerous, adds to the credibility strain. No concerts, except the non-sold-out pair in 1972, let alone tours. “Mind Games”, “Walls And Bridges” and “Rock N’ Roll” took 6 weeks each to record, including rehearsals.

While there seems no doubt that John took to being a home-father – although he seemed to have no trouble continuing to have little to no interest in seeing Julian for most of this half-decade – to say he gave the music career up for that is stretching it too far. Just because he said he did, does not make it so; what it does is to make it an acceptable cover story. Remember, John also claimed “not to have touched” a guitar in all this time. We now know, from the decades-long drip-feed of home-cassette recordings, that he was working on songs frequently, but that John had great difficulty coming up with complete numbers in this period. A melody line here with no lyric, two thirds of a song with no chorus or middle eight.

The truer story is much likelier to be that, the record industry was by now extremely ambivalent towards John, and in no small part because of the omnipresent chance of getting a “Some Time In New York City” co-production (which is of course what Geffen ended up receiving). At the same time, John was unable to put together cohesive music of the quality and quality needed. He had the large Apple settlement. He had a new son, and Sean gave him the wall that meant he could close his bridge. For all his hardman credentials, John always seemed to need someone to hide behind in some way, be it Yoko, Klein, or nuns at Manilla airport. To claim he needed a break from the music industry is really taking the salt cellar to overdrive – if one added up the musical ‘work’ John did in the last 10 years of his life, i.e. studio, stage and media, it would barely run to 6 months of full working days.

Having said all that – as history reminds us every time we think of him, for both their sakes, thank goodness John did have that break with Sean.