The music industry works in mysterious ways. John Lennon’s tragic death in 1980 might have catapulted one of his songs to No. 1 in the United States. The song in question was a tribute to the early rockers Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison.
A John Lennon song hit No. 1 the week after he died
There was a five-year gap between John’s 1975 covers album Rock ‘n’ Roll and his final album, Double Fantasy. The lead single from Double Fantasy was “(Just Like) Starting Over.” That gap would have led to plenty of anticipation for new music from the “Imagine” singer.
According to Stereogum, “(Just Like) Starting Over” was No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 the last day of John’s life. The following week, it hit No. 1. Stereogum theorizes “(Just Like) Starting Over” would have climbed to the top even if John had lived. After all, many Paul McCartney songs hit No. 1 following The Beatles’ breakup. Of course, that’s impossible to know how the public would have responded to “(Just Like) Starting Over” in different circumstances. Certainly, hearing such a sweet song after John’s shocking death would have been a comfort to some of his fans as they grieved for him.
The singer compared the song to 2 hits from Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison
During a 1980 Rolling Stone interview recorded in the book Lennon on Lennon: Conversations With John Lennon, John discussed his intentions for “(Just Like) Starting Over.” “All through the taping of ‘Starting Over,’ I was calling what I was doing ‘Elvis Orbison:’ ‘I want you I need only the lonely,’” he said. John might’ve been referencing the lyrics of both Elvis’ “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” and Orbison’s “Only the Lonely.”
“I’m a born-again rocker, I feel that refreshed, and I’m going right back to my roots,” John added. “It’s like [Bob] Dylan doing Nashville Skyline, except I don’t have any Nashville, you know, being from Liverpool. So I go back to the records I know — Elvis and Roy Orbison and Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee Lewis. I occasionally get ripped off into walruses or ‘Revolution 9,’ but my far-out side has been completely encompassed by Yoko.”
Why John Lennon felt he could draw influence from 1950s music in the 1980s
The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features an interview from 1980. In it, John explained why he felt comfortable making a 1950s-style song in the early 1980s. “I’d done that music and identified with it — that was my period — but I’d never written a song that sounded like that period,” he said. “So I just thought, ‘Why the hell not?’
“In the Beatles days that would have been taken as a joke,” he continued. “One avoided clichés. ‘ Course now clichés are not clichés anymore.” John correctly predicted that 1950s-style media would connect with 1980s audiences, as evidenced by the popularity of Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” Back to the Future, and Happy Days.
“(Just Like) Starting Over” was a big hit and we’ll never know exactly why.
