By 1973, John Lennon had done something for the first time in his career that no one previously thought possible – he made a bad record. After the widely acclaimed Imagine, his followup Some Time in New York City wasn’t well-received by critics or fans. On top of that, Lennon’s marriage to Yoko Ono was failing, and tensions between the two were at an all-time high. Ono proposed a simple solution: Send Lennon off to go live with their personal assistant, May Pang, in an attempt to save their marriage.
The 18 months that followed became known as his Lost Weekend, regarded as one of the epic benders of rock history complete with non-stop partying with the icons of the era. While that was a part of what happened, it proved to be one of Lennon’s most creatively prolific periods between his own projects, his collaborations, and even mending bridges with his former bandmates that nearly resulted in a full-fledged Beatles reunion. He indulged himself in every sense of the word, relished in his own celebrity, and broadened his already massive influence on popular music.
The studio albums
After recording Mind Games at the beginning of he and Ono’s separation in June 1973, he went back into the studio that October to record a collection of rock standards for an album that eventually came to be known as Rock and Roll. At first, he gave full creative control to producer Phil Spector, as Lennon wanted to focus on his singing. Drummer Jim Keltner, who worked frequently with Lennon throughout his solo career, remembers it as the time when Lennon began “exercising all his bad habits, as were we all, including Phil. The only problem with that was that Phil was the producer, and somebody had to be, you know, sane.”
Such lack of sanity was on full display when Spector pulled a gun out and fired it in the studio, resulting in Lennon telling him “Phil, if you’re going to kill me, kill me. But don’t f*ck with my ears. I need ‘em.” After numerous drunken, insanity-fueled recording sessions, Spector suddenly disappeared with the master tapes from the recording sessions, with Lennon having to rely on Capital Records to get them back. The album would come out two years later, after Lennon deemed most of the original sessions “unusable.”
As the debacle behind the Rock and Roll album was unfolding, Lennon and Pang had moved back to New York City, where he began working on Walls and Bridges, the only album written, recorded, and released during his Lost Weekend. The album was recorded without booze and drugs in the studio, which allowed Lennon’s creativity to flourish. Rolling Stone said the record showed Lennon as “mercurial as ever” and that “for the first time since the formation of the Beatles, Lennon is on his own and, remarkably, he seems to find that tolerable.”
The Jam Sessions
Aside from recording his own music, Lennon kept busy in the studio on the production side of things. He produced a song for Mick Jagger, a cover of Willie Dixon’s “Too Many Cooks,” which may (or may not) have included Lennon on guitar and Ringo Starr on the drums, John Entwistle and Keith Moon from The Who, along with several other session musicians. Once it was recorded, the song spent 30 years lost to history, the only copy surfacing in 2003 by a record collector who claimed to be friends with Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood. It wasn’t formally released until 2007, as part of a Best Of collection. Jagger explained its disappearance rather routinely.
I’ve no idea why we didn’t put it out. We just forgot about it. It was just one of those things. I was trying to find the master [tape] and I was digging around – one was destroyed in a fire, one was given to a wife in a divorce who threw it out.
Once back in New York City, Lennon met David Bowie at a party thrown by Elizabeth Taylor. The two of them sat and drew caricatures of one another, discussing “what it all meant,” and later Lennon would attend a recording session for Bowie’s upcoming album Young Americans. As a result of their impromptu jam session came Bowie’s song “Fame,” which became Bowie’s biggest hit at the time in the U.S.
The song was a guitar riff that [guitarist] Carlos Alomar had. He used to play in James Brown’s band and he’d come up with this riff for a song called “Foot Stompin’.” When we were in the studio with John Lennon, I asked Carlos, “What was that riff you had?” And it went from there.
The most substantial collaboration, however, came from a late-night jam that included Lennon, Stevie Wonder, and his old songwriting partner, Paul McCartney, who showed up unannounced, subbing in for Ringo on the drums. They’d gathered together during a recording session of Harry Nilsson’s album Pussy Cats, which Lennon was producing. Their resulting jam session floated around for years as a bootleg titled A Toot and a Snore in ’74, and remains the last recording that featured both Lennon and McCartney.
Pang recalled how eagerly Paul approached John, and how their interaction was so friendly, considering the very public feud the two were engaged in at the time, with songs like Lennon’s “How Do You Sleep” and McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs” being written to attack one another.
They couldn’t be the two men who not only had been trading vicious attacks with each other in public but also had squadrons of lawyers poised in battle against each other while they carved up their multimillion-dollar empire. They looked like any old pair of friends having a pleasant low-key reunion.
“Wouldn’t it be fun to get the guys back together again?” Lennon asked Pang, and the two made plans to visit New Orleans, where McCartney was working on the Wings album Venus and Mars. There was talk among the four of them to reunite, though the trip to New Orleans never took place, as Ono had allegedly reached out to Lennon the day before, and the two reconciled shortly thereafter.
The Hollywood Vampires
Though for all the creative output Lennon managed, his Lost Weekend remains synonymous with one long rock star-style bender. His group of friends became known as “the Hollywood vampires,” and boasted a roster including Nilsson, Keith Moon, Micky Dolenz (from The Monkees), and Alice Cooper. One of the most public instances came about when Lennon and Nilsson showed up to The Troubadour in June 1974, a place Lennon had already made headlines in earlier that year, and started to heckle The Smothers Brothers.
Already overloaded on Brandy Alexanders, John became immediately disruptive, joining Harry in a cacophonous songfest and hurling a stream of obscenities at the Smothers. Events took a nasty turn when the duo’s manager Ken Fritz confronted an out-of-control John and hauled him from his seat. Lennon exploded, overturning the table and the pair exchanged a few halfhearted fisticuffs. Lennon and company were literally thrown out the door where they tumbled into a party of incoming patrons, touching off a full-blown street brawl.
The incident, which took place in front of an audience that included stars Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and Lily Tomlin, as well as rat-packer Peter Lawford, who took part in the “full-blown street brawl” that followed, made headlines around the world the next day.
While the image of a drunk, belligerent Lennon is synonymous with his Lost Weekend, it’s certainly not the entire story. He reconnected with his former bandmates, made new friends, and helped broaden his impact on the musical world. He seemed willing to be up for anything before ultimately returning to his life with Ono. For the next five years, he disappeared from public life, choosing to raise their child, Sean. He told Rolling Stone that year, “I’m through it, and it’s [19]75 now, and I feel better, and I’m sittin’ here and not lyin’ in some weird place with a hangover,” adding that he looked at his Lost Weekend “like I’ve been on Sinbad’s voyage, you know, and I’ve battled all those monsters and I’ve got back. Weird.”
