When John Lennon Was Starting Over
John Lennon would have turned 75 on Friday.
He was two months past his 40th birthday when he was murdered as he entered his apartment building, the Dakota, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, on Dec. 8, 1980.
Absent from the music business for five years — most of it spent living the quiet life of a house husband and father in New York — he had just returned to recording. The “Double Fantasy” album he made with his wife, Yoko Ono, had been in stores less than a month. A single from the album, “Just Like Starting Over,” pretty much said it all.
This “starting over” was chronicled in a profile by Robert Palmer in The Times on Nov. 9, a month before the murder. The article, based on a series of interviews with the couple during the making of “Double Fantasy” and after its completion, featured a reflective Lennon and began like this:
“ ‘Is it possible to have a life centered around a family and a child and still be an artist?’ asked John Lennon.”
He answered his own question as Mr. Palmer interviewed the couple in their apartment. “In a way,” he said, “we’re involved in a kind of experiment. Could the family be the inspiration for art, instead of drinking or drugs or whatever? I’m interested in finding that out.”
By: Mary Jo Murphy
Source: NY Times
