Revisiting the Finality of John and Yoko’s Milk and Honey LP
Looking back on 40 years of a haunting sonic love letter
It’s impossible to look back at this album without considering the unimaginable tragedy that preceded it.
In 1980, John and Yoko released Double Fantasy, Lennon’s first recorded work in five years. It was a triumphant return to form after 1975’s uneven covers album, Rock ‘n’ Roll. It hit number one in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Japan and a bunch of other countries, and won the Grammy for Album of the Year.
John never lived to enjoy the triumph: Three weeks after its November 17 release, Lennon was gunned down by Mark David Chapman.
Milk and Honey was to be the follow-up to Double Fantasy, with many of the songs recorded during the same sessions. It took Ono three years of dealing with Lennon’s murder to be able to turn her attention back to the album, which was released January 23, 1984 (according to the official Lennon website, though Wikipedia and other sources cite January 27 as the release date).
For a moment, put yourself in Yoko’s shoes.
I know, I know. There is a lot (and I mean a lot) that’s been said about her over the years. But let’s try and ignore all that and at least recognize that John and Yoko personify what is probably the greatest rock and roll romance of all time. If you want to put Johnny Cash in the rock category, then he and June Carter might give them a run for their money. Maybe one or two others. Still and all, John and Yoko are right up there at the top – and to really understand John and his music, one needs to accept Yoko and hers.
So this album can be seen as a half dozen Yoko songs to be pretty much ignored and a half dozen Lennon songs, a few of them in unfinished form, to be considered in light of the rest of his recorded legacy. Or it can be seen as intended: a “heart play” in which John and Yoko’s songs alternate like the interlocking fingers of two people in love holding hands.
Given Lennon’s relationship with Ono and the horrific shadow cast over this album’s release, it feels disrespectful and short-sighted to do anything but the latter.
As Ono writes in the liner notes, two songs form the cornerstone of this record: her own “Let Me Count the Ways” and John’s “Grow Old with Me.”
John felt that “Grow Old with Me” (originally intended for Double Fantasy) would be, as Yoko writes, “a standard, the kind that they would play in church every time a couple gets married.” The version here is literally the last recording Lennon made in his lifetime, an unpolished demo recorded on cassette.
Given that John and Yoko felt that they were maybe the reincarnation of Robert and Elizabeth Browning (“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be” are the opening lines of Robert Browning’s “Rabbi Ben Ezra”), one can only imagine the unimaginably profound pain Yoko must feel when she hears those final recorded words: “Grow old along with me / The best is yet to be / When our time has come / We will be as one / God bless our love.”
The tune comes late in the album, appropriately the last Lennon track of the heart play. It’s preceded by “Let Me Count the Ways,” and if you have that reflexive anti-Yoko reaction to her voice, that’s okay. Put the music and her singing aside and consider the poetry of what she’s expressing: “Let me count the ways how I miss you … Let me count the ways how I see you … Let me count the ways how you touch me.”
Lennon’s last track is followed by Yoko’s “You’re the One,” another profoundly bittersweet expression of how the whole (John & Yoko) was greater than the sum of the parts (John and Yoko): “We were Laurel and Hardy in our minds / We were Heathcliff and Cathy in a moment of wisdom … We were just a boy and a girl who never looked back.”
Meanwhile, the Lennon material here runs the spectrum from the unfinished “Grow Old with Me” (we can only speculate how a polished version of this might have become nearly as iconic as “Imagine”) to one of the very best tracks he ever recorded, “Nobody Told Me.”
“I’m Stepping Out,” a celebration of the city he grew to love and become so identified with, kicks off the album, complete with introductory references to his famed househusband period. This second-best track on the album finds Lennon relaxed, playful, and comfortable in his own skin: “After all is said and done you can’t go pleasin’ everyone / So screw it.”
“I Don’t Wanna Face It” has a guitar lick that would be right at home on a Prince tune and a lyric that feels like a callback to “Revolution” from the White Album: “You wanna save humanity / But it’s people that you just can’t stand.”
“(Forgive Me) My Little Flower Princess” is another in a long line of love songs from John to Yoko, and “Borrowed Time” is a brutally ironic take on being comfortable with growing older, a theme that circles back to the heartfelt optimism of “Grow Old with Me.”
Growing older? Older?! The Smart Beatle was just 40 when Mark David Scumbag pulled the trigger. George was 58 when he died. Paul is 81 and Ringo is 83, fer Chrissake. Both have made some terrific albums in the last 40 years, and both have toured to the delight and wonder of audiences worldwide.
John, growing older, was only 40. Just think about all the music that was stolen from us that chilly December night in front of the Dakota.
Which is really the legacy of Milk and Honey: Yes, it’s a haunting expression of deep, deep love between two remarkable people, but most of all it’s a ghostly reminder of the promise of what might have been. The Double Fantasy sessions resulted in some of the most enduring songs of Lennon’s solo catalog. He was in a remarkably good place: The Lost Weekend was behind him, he’d come to embrace a stable family life, his creative muse was once again whispering in his ear, and anything and everything seemed musically possible.
Fuck you, Chapman.
- No Surrender: Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. Turns 40 - June 4, 2024
- Future Legend: David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs Turns 50 - May 24, 2024
- How Robert Hunter Stepped Out from the Shadows of The Grateful Dead - May 22, 2024
You May Also Like
-
November 11, 2018 -
December 5, 2022 -
September 23, 2020
I’m still so sad after all this time. And still love John & Yoko.