No longer riding on the merry-go-round

Thursday music corner: John Winston Ono Lennon (1940-80) moved to the US in 1971. In 1980 he released his fifth album with Yoko Ono, Double Fantasy, which was his return to recording after five years on hiatus in New York, spent raising his son Sean. The album featured Lennon numbers (Just Like) Starting Over, Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy), Woman, plus the track Watching the Wheels as the opening number on Side 2. Yoko Ono’s compositions also featured, alternating with Lennon’s. He had started writing Watching the Wheels in 1977, and over the years its title evolved from Emotional Wreck, to People, and then to I’m Crazy, before settling on the final title. Three weeks after the album was released in November 1980, Lennon was murdered outside his Dakota apartment building in Manhattan. Watching the Wheels, which had coalesced into a proudly sweet statement of familial self-content, was released as a poignant posthumous single. It reached number 10 in the Billboard chart, and number 30 in the UK singles chart, but only number 44 in New Zealand.

John Lennon – Watching the Wheels (recorded 1980, released 1981)

See also:

Blog: The last time Paul saw John, 20 September 2015

Blog: There was a kind of mischief about her, 5 December 2013

Blog: John, your little friend is here, 10 February 2010