John Lennon’s return to the recording studio in August 1980, after a five-year break, was captured in a series of photographs taken by Roger Farrington. The photographer will publish a book on the 8th that gathers these images, taken just four months before the former Beatles member was murdered outside his home in New York.
Farrington, a photographer from Massachusetts, accompanied Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, from their residence in the Dakota building to the nearby legendary studio The Hit Factory, in Manhattan, where the couple was working on the recording of Double Fantasy, according to The Boston Globe on Thursday. Farrington was chosen to document Lennon’s return to musical activity after five years away from the studios, a period the artist had largely dedicated to his son Sean, born from his relationship with Ono.
At 27 years old at the time, the photographer captured about thirty images of the couple, both outside and inside the studio. Among them stands out a photograph of Lennon and Ono walking hand in hand at the doors of The Hit Factory, an image that, according to Farrington, “went around the world.” The photograph was also the only one from that day that Lennon and Ono purchased to accompany the press release announcing their return to musical activity.
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Almost 46 years later, Farrington has decided to publish that series in the book Starting Over with John and Yoko: The Photographs. The cover shows Lennon sitting with a guitar next to Ono, also seated and holding a cigarette in her right hand. “I wanted people to see who John Lennon was in 1980, not in 1964. The Beatles had long since disappeared,” Farrington explained to The Boston Globe.
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The photographer also recalled Lennon’s “obvious” enthusiasm for that new stage. The musician was about to turn 40 on October 9, 1980, and was preparing to resume his musical career after several years away from the stage and studios. Farrington wanted to keep the entire series made that day in the book, including the photographs he considers less successful. His intention, he explained, was to include “the good, the bad, and the ugly” to show the story as it happened.
In November 1980, Lennon and Ono released Double Fantasy, the album that marked the musician’s recording comeback. Just a few weeks later, on December 8, Lennon was shot dead outside the Dakota building as he was returning home with Ono. The perpetrator of the crime, his admirer Mark David Chapman, was later sentenced to between 20 years in prison and life imprisonment. Starting Over with John and Yoko: The Photographs, created in collaboration with writer and music historian Kenneth Womack, specialized in the cultural influence of The Beatles, will be published by Rutgers University Press.
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