Reporters Thought 1 John Lennon Album Would Be About His Sexual Fantasies
Journalists didn’t always understand classic rock stars. One of John Lennon’s albums had a title that the press misinterpreted as being sexual. John’s son, Sean Ono Lennon, revealed why that album was so important to him.
John Lennon read many false reports about his last album
During a 1980 interview from the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, John discussed his most recent album, Double Fantasy. The album was a collaboration with Yoko which featured a lot of her vocals. “It’s not a sex fantasy, as a lot of the stories in the press are saying, ‘They’re putting their sex fantasies down on a record! Ohmigosh!'” John said. “Yeah, I’ve read that. I read everything.” Contrary to the buzz surrounding it, Double Fantasy is an album about wholesome domestic bliss that’s barely sexual at all.
John compared the reaction to Double Fantasy to his famous Bed-In for Peace protests against the Vietnam War. “They all came charging through the door thinking we were going to be screwing in bed,” John recalled. “And, of course, we were just sitting there with peace signs.”
The ‘Imagine’ singer revealed whether the album was autobiographical or not
John was asked if Double Fantasy was autobiographical. “If you ask me that next year, I might have a different answer, but now I’ll say that it is completely autobiographical,” he said. “It’s about us over the last five or six years.” Interestingly, Double Fantasy came out five years after John’s previous album, Rock ‘n’ Roll.
“It’s like a movie, though, and the script is constantly changing,” he said. “When you shuffle a scene here and there, does it change the story? I don’t know. So there is a thread there that is a story, but we’ve shuffled the scenes. And whether it is complete or not — well, it’s like ‘Who shot J.R.?’ Get the next album and see.” Sadly, John’s next album, Milk and Honey, came out posthumously in 1984.
John Lennon’s son isn’t a big fan of ‘Double Fantasy’ even though it’s important to him
John and Yoko had one child together: Sean Ono Lennon, who became a musician in his own right. During a 2020 interview with Rolling Stone, he revealed his opinions on Double Fantasy. He thought the technology used to make the record wasn’t great. While the record meant a lot to Sean because it came out right before his father’s death, he’s not a fan of its production.
Despite this, Sean is a fan of two tunes from the record: the album track “I’m Losing You” and the hit single “Watching the Wheels.” He felt the latter could have set the tone for the next phase of John’s career if he had lived. In Sean’s opinion, “Watching the Wheels” is a deep and melancholy song. That’s an interesting take, as the tune’s lyrics are about contentment.
The press didn’t understand the concept behind Double Fantasy, but the record mattered a lot to Sean.
