What Were John Lennon's (and Yoko Ono's) Actual Plans for 1981? Some Were Obvious
December 8, 2025, will mark 45 years since the senseless murder of John Lennon. And all these years later, it still remains one of rock's greatest tragedies: not only did it spell the end once and for all of any potential Beatles reunion, but also the fact that Lennon appeared to be gearing up for a highly productive creative period, after being out of the limelight for several years.
This leaves one to wonder what projects he had in the works for 1981. Over the years, quite a few people who worked closely with Lennon dropped a few hints as to what he had in the pipeline. Lennon's biggest plan for 1981 appeared to be the launch of his first-ever substantial solo tour in support of his most recent album, "Double Fantasy," which was released on November 17, 1980, less than a month before his death.
In the 2020 book, "John Winston Ono Lennon", the bassist in Plastic Ono Elephant's Memory Band, Gary Van Scyoc, recalled a conversation he had with Lennon concerning this topic. "We talked on the phone, and he said, 'I'm hoping to go out. I don't know who would want to do it – whether Tony Levin [who had played on 'Double Fantasy'] would want to tour.' I said, 'Put my name on the list,' and he said I'd be the first person he'd call. And that's the last time I spoke to him."
However, Cheap Trick's Bun E. Carlos made it seem like Lennon had another plan in mind for his "tour-that-never-was."
"Then after Lennon got shot, the next year we started to hear things like, 'Oh, he loved working with you guys [on a version of 'I'm Losing You']. He wanted you to be in his band when he toured. He wanted to use Cheap Trick as his band.'"
In addition to touring in the immediate future, Lennon also appeared eager to work on a solo album by his wife, Yoko Ono, with whom he had collaborated on "Double Fantasy." This would later be confirmed as fact when it came to light that earlier in the evening, when Lennon was fatally shot, he had been working on the Ono song "Walking on Thin Ice" at the Record Plant. The song would be issued as a single on February 6, 1981.
As renowned rock photographer and Lennon friend Bob Gruen later explained, "Because Yoko had gotten good reviews [on 'Double Fantasy'], they decided to immediately do a single – a new record – with Yoko, which was 'Walking on Thin Ice.' That's what they were working on that night in December, in the studio. They wanted to get a new single out, to capitalize on the fact that the critics seemed to suddenly like her."
"So, we were talking about how in December, he was going to take a couple of weeks off after finishing that record for the holidays, and then come back in January, and he was going to get a band together and make some videos to promote the record. Then in February, start rehearsing with the band, and by March, was going to go out on a tour all around the world. So, we were up until dawn."
And speaking of videos, MTV was still half a year away from being launched at the time of Lennon's death. However, the ex-Beatle could apparently sense the value of the format, as he was working on a video clip for his hit single, "(Just Like) Starting Over," around this time. However, despite a photo existing from the video shoot (of Lennon sitting in an all-white room), the music video was never completed, nor was footage ever released.
According to an interview with Yoko Ono in an interview quote in the aforementioned "John Winston Ono Lennon" book, music video was not the only visual medium she felt her husband would have embraced in the future.
"He would be so excited about the computer stuff. Because we all kept saying, 'global village.' But now it really is a global village through the computer, through the internet, etc. And John was the kind of person that would jump on it. He would be using the art shelf stuff to create computer art and also he would be sending messages to the whole world."
Getting back to his plans for 1981, Lennon also appeared set on not only playing on Ringo Starr's next solo album, "Stop and Smell the Roses" (which also included appearances by the other Beatles, Paul McCartney and George Harrison), but he was planning on offering Starr two originals of his to cover for the LP: "Nobody Told Me" and "Life Begins at 40." However, after Lennon's death, Starr declined to record them.
Source: Ultimate Guitar
