Music: What’s right about Stripped Down

The Post-Modern Deconstruction

of Double Fantasy …

(or, John Lennon Lives!)

By Jeff Katz
Music Editor

What to do about the new John Lennon remasters? Let’s be honest, Lennon’s solo work is a mixed bag. He may very well have the greatest individual work of any member of the erstwhile Fab Four (Plastic Ono Band). Imagine was a huge leap downward, though still excellent. (Here’s the sacrilege: “Imagine” is a puerile piece, perhaps the most overrated bit of pop utopianism ever recorded. Think how much Paul McCartney would have been skewered had he written the sophomoric sentiments of this bit of Lennon legend). There’s a sample of pleasant dreck (Mind Games and Walls and Bridges) and then a dollop of lifeless drivel (Sometime in New York City and Rock ’n’ Roll). After John was murdered, and sales of his catalog skyrocketed, a dorm resident from across the hall knocked on my door with fury.

“This album sucks!” he yelled at me accusatorily. I was, after all, the Beatle expert and therefore responsible.

“Just ‘cause he’s dead doesn’t make his albums great,” I responded.

I love John, have all his solo albums and enjoy them, but I have no interest in the remasters as a set of work.

When Double Fantasy was released in the fall of 1980, I was prepared for anything. What I got was an assortment of disappointment and surprise. The songs, split between John and Yoko, showed the latter to be the edgier and more rhythmically exciting member of the duo. “(Just Like) Starting Over,” the John track that began his first album in five years, was just awful, though I appreciated his tip of the cap to the heroes of his rock and roll youth. Many of Lennon’s tracks were mediocre, though he soared with “Watching the Wheels” and “Beautiful Boy.” Worst of all, the ultra-slick ’80s’ production left me cold. Where was the warmth and playfulness, the fervor of the John Lennon that I, and millions of others, waited half a decade to hear? The album was a solid seller that turned brisk after the horrible news less than a month after it hit the stores.

Turns out John was there all along, and the new “Stripped Down” remix of Double Fantasy, shows the Johnny Boy we always knew. The instrumentation is spare, the production value zero and the vocals boosted to the forefront. John’s songs come across as polished demos, complete with background murmurings and intro and outro commentary a la Let It Be. The Lennon humor is front and center and that voice, oh that voice, is a game changer.

I’m still not a fan of “Starting Over,” but its stark form, including a direct tribute to Lennon’s own four angels, takes a bad song and makes it better. Every song lays bare the soul of the man in a way the original version glossed over. “Watching the Wheels,” still my favorite and, since my own departure from “the big time” financial world at age 40 my self-appointed theme song, is heartbreakingly real. “Beautiful Boy” is less grand in its Spartan incarnation, but the punched up vocals more than make up for it. Over time I’ve grown to appreciate John’s songs on Double Fantasy more, but never more than in these renditions. Yoko’s vocals don’t come across any worse in the naked versions, though her climactic, well, uh, “climax,” to “Kiss Kiss Kiss” is submerged in the new mix. (We do live in more conservative times after all). Overall, the overproduction of the initial release added to the propulsion of her tracks and that’s lost here; “Give Me Something” is a towering exception. The final two tracks, “Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him” and “Hard Times Are Over,” are reworked as solid duets. The latter, a churchy pastiche, has Lennon at his most knee-slapping funny.

The passionate, meaningful voice that we think of when we think of John Lennon, not the softened edition prepackaged for a return to 1980 Top 40 radio, has been reclaimed on Double Fantasy Stripped Down. Hearing that voice now makes you realize how much was lost on December 8, 1980.