Tony Levin recalled the experience of working on John Lennon’s final album Double Fantasy as a positive and upbeat one. The Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Pink Floyd and Stevie Nicks bassist said Lennon made things so easy that anyone could have done his job.
While Levin was naturally aware of the ex-Beatle’s status, he didn’t know about the background to Double Fantasy, which marked a return to form after several years in the doldrums. That return to form was to remain in potential only when Lennon was shot dead weeks after the album’s launch in 1980.
Levin recently told Vinyl Guide that producer Jack Douglas had recommended him for the sessions. He recalled that Lennon’s first words when they met were, “They tell me you’re good. Just don’t play too many notes.”
“There was some tension in the air,“ Levin added, ”good tension, not at all a negative tension… He would be playing this piece and suddenly he’d say, ‘Stop! Stop fooling around!’ — like it wasn’t his idea. ‘Stop fooling around. Let’s do the take.’ And one-two, he’d count it off and that would be the take.”
Lennon was fooling around plenty, Levin added.
“I could tell he was really enjoying jamming and playing. In between takes he’d start playing, let’s say, Buddy Holly pieces and really having a ball with it. But later I realized that he hadn’t been doing that in a long time.”
The bassist was also struck by Lennon’s style of working with wife and musical partner Yoko Ono.
“We would alternate [his] songs with Yoko’s, which were… not only different musically, but she didn’t play an instrument. So she couldn’t direct you in how to play it. So it was a different kind of experience, trying to come up with the groove or even the, not groove, but the basis of how to play her pieces.”
“John didn’t give any input on it,” he continued. “He was like the tea boy! He’d say, ‘Hey, you want some tea?’ [he’d] stay in the control room. [It was] very respectful and very impressive that they had that relationship.”
Referring again to Lennon’s comfortable attitude to the studio, Levin remembered: “John comes over and plays guitar for you and sings a song, and it’s there. It’s like, you know, 10,000 bass players could have played the right part on that song. And I was lucky to be the one who was there in the room.”
