Remember When: A Posthumous Album Unearthed John Lennon’s Final Sessions in 1984

Countless individual heartbreaks are wrapped up in the massive tragedy of John Lennon’s death. One of those separate sorrows is that we were robbed of the songs and albums that Lennon would have delivered had he lived.

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Milk And Honey, released in 1984, at least gave us a taste of what Lennon had in store for us. The posthumous album captured Lennon relaxed, eager, and at the top of his game.

‘Fantasy’ Extras

John Lennon and Yoko Ono released Double Fantasy in November 1980. The married couple split the album down the middle. That meant one song apiece for Lennon and Ono all the way through. The pattern would be repeated on Milk and Honey four years later.

The setup of Double Fantasy only required six Lennon originals. But he was brimming with creativity. After all, his househusband period caused a five-year layoff from recording. Knowing that he wouldn’t have room for them all, he nonetheless recorded plenty of extra songs during the sessions that also yielded the Double Fantasy songs.

Lennon and his studio band had given these extra songs relatively complete run-throughs. There were no overdubs done at the time, but Lennon was planning to get back to the studio in early 1981 to take care of that. Sadly, he never had that opportunity, as he was killed on December 8, 1980.

Yoko’s Task

Yoko Ono sat with the extra material from those sessions for several years. Her reasons for waiting were many. On the one hand, it was extremely painful for her to revisit that music in the immediate wake of Lennon’s death. In addition, she understood, with her typical savvy, that the media might have accused her of callousness if she had immediately released this material.

Instead, she concentrated on grieving with her son Sean while also ensuring that Lennon’s estate and business affairs weren’t negatively impacted by his death. She released a solo album, Season Of Glass, in 1981. The record dealt in often harrowing terms with the aftermath of her husband’s death.

Finally, in 1983, Ono decided to prepare the extraneous songs from the Double Fantasy sessions for release. She once again came up with six songs of her own to intersperse between the Lennon tracks. Released in January 1984, Milk and Honey gave the world a chance to hear original music from John Lennon.

A ‘Honey’ Hit

Ono made the decision to present the Lennon recordings pretty much as they were. She refused to try and guess what he might have done with overdubs. She also included “Grow Old With Me”, a touching ballad that Lennon had only recorded in solo demo form.

Milk And Honey even delivered a hit single from the pack. “Nobody Told Me”, which Lennon had written with the original intent of handing it to Ringo Starr, made it to the Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic in early 1984.

Although other unheard Lennon recordings made it out over the years, Milk And Honey represented what was essentially his final studio album. Ideally, those songs would have been a stepping stone to more brilliance instead of a collective closing statement.

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