For the first half of the 1970s, it seemed like John Lennon had finally started finding peace in his life. As much as he may have wanted to rally against the world’s injustices, albums like Plastic Ono Band and Imagine showed the former Beatle leaving some of the caustic side of his work behind, favouring songs about the joy that can come from life. Once he settled in New York, though, Lennon found a new partner in crime when working with David Bowie.
Initially moving stateside to be with Yoko Ono, Lennon’s first major breakthrough during this period was his participation in the album Some Time In New York City. Fresh off the sounds of protest songs like ‘Power to the People’, Lennon wanted to make an album that would stand as political propaganda for the time, incorporating real-world issues on songs like ‘The Luck of The Irish’ and ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’.
Once the album met a deaf ear, Lennon and Ono separated for the first time, leading to Lennon indulging in a wilderness period while working on his latest solo outings. While working on his own albums like Walls and Bridges and Mind Games, Lennon would also find time to work with Bowie, then undergoing his latest musical reinvention.
Before lending his skills to any of Bowie’s masterpieces, Lennon would first become friendly with Bowie under more naughty circumstances. As Tony Visconti recalled, the first time Lennon began working alongside ‘The Starman’ involved a lot more chemical assistance at the top of The Hotel Pierre.
Recalling the period, Visconti remembered the absurd amount of cocaine present at the meeting, saying, “On the floor was David and a beautiful Hispanic woman, really, really beautiful, and between them there was like a mountain of cocaine. It was Mount Everest but about six inches high. You know, with ski slopes, it was like the real deal. And on the couch is my idol, John Lennon. I couldn’t believe it”.
After hours of Bowie being intimidated by Lennon, the various lines being snorted led to them breaking the ice by drawing different caricatures of each other. Although Visconti may have been present for the outlandish parties, he would not contribute to their massive collaboration, ‘Fame’, with Bowie booking a session with Lennon on the spur of the moment.
Although the music became one of the celebrated moments of Bowie’s career, this era also began one of the darkest times for both artists’ careers. Venturing to California, Bowie would sculpt his ‘Thin White Duke’ persona on Station to Station, resulting in him becoming interested in the occult and making songs he had no memory of recording.
Lennon would also succumb to his nasty habits during his supposed “lost weekend” shortly thereafter. Needing more space from Ono, Lennon would move to Los Angeles and lose himself in a bottle when trying to record the covers album Rock and Roll, only for him to see the light at the end of the tunnel when getting an invitation to return home from Ono.
Despite the more nefarious habits, Bowie and Lennon were able to create magic in the studio, taking bits and pieces from what they were working on and going on to create a vivid picture of what the cost of fame can do to a person. Lennon may have been a somewhat reserved artist throughout his solo career, but sometimes, the strangest situations can result in musical magic.
