![]() ![]() ![]() A mixture of very old with strikingly new, Lennon’s contribution finally completed “Walking on Thin Ice.”Ĭritic Robert Palmer hailed Lennon’s “crashing, distorted guitar solo,” describing it as “brilliant, pulse-quickening rock ‘n’ roll brinksmanship” in a 1981 review for the New York Times. He apparently hadn’t used it since a George Martin-led session in the mid-’60s.ĭouglas worked the Bigsby whammy bar while Lennon played, creating an eerie vibrato that shrouded everything in a dark new ambience. 4, Lennon was moved to pull out his black 1958 Rickenbacker 325, a guitar he debuted for American audiences during the Beatles’ 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. “I don’t mean ‘go like this’ in terms of notes, but just the mood of it.”īack in the studio on Thursday, Dec. “We’d talk about it – like, I would say, ‘I’m going to go like this you go like this,'” Ono told American Songwriter. Ono discussed what direction Lennon’s guitar part might take, but only in the most general of ways. And the whole feel of it was so different that she was going to have a hit.” ![]() Douglas said “John knew that Yoko was onto something with that one – especially with that spoken word. Lennon was intently listening, taking it all in. Listen to Yoko Ono and John Lennon Perform ‘Walking on Thin Ice’ I was just thinking of this woman that is walking Lake Michigan when it is totally frozen, and is walking and walking – but not knowing that it’s that huge.” “Lake Michigan is so big that you don’t know the end of it when you look at it,” Ono added. The image in her mind traced back to a recent trip to Chicago. Then I sang the song, and I was still sitting in the chair by the mic, waiting for them to change the tape. “I just knew it had something to do with a girl who is walking. “That feeling came to me after we recorded it, but I wasn’t sure about it,” she told American Songwriter in 1992. Then Ono hit upon the idea of a closing spoken-word segment. She recut her vocal, but felt something was still missing. Just you and me and Yoko, that’s all I want.”ĭouglas created a loop from the earlier takes for Ono and Lennon to build upon. “I feel like I just don’t want to leave the studio. “We’re going back again,” Douglas later remembered Lennon telling him. But then he called Douglas, intent on returning to Ono’s “Walking on Thin Ice.” Lennon was reportedly all set for a short vacation before firming up plans for a tour. Work on Double Fantasy concluded in mid-October 1980, and the album followed that November. “I wanted to push it a little further, experimentally,” Ono told Madeline Bocaro in 2016. This early version found a home in an initial running order for Double Fantasy from later the same month, but was ultimately set aside in favor of Ono’s “Kiss Kiss Kiss.” “Walking on Thin Ice” had originally been pieced together through seven takes, during sessions begun in August 1980 at the Hit Factory. It was nothing like the gossamer, deeply content music from the studio project they’d recently issued together. Lennon had assumed a sideman’s role with Ono before, notably on early ’70s albums like Fly and the then-just released Double Fantasy, but this track would be different.ĭominated by edgy dance beats and patently weird Ono vocal, “Walking on Thin Ice” is the sound of Lennon leaving behind convention. The Jack Douglas-produced “Walking on Thin Ice” found Ono again in a rangy mindset, pushing Lennon to the edges of his muse. Inside was the completed mix of Yoko Ono‘s “Walking on Thin Ice” with one final mind-bending solo from the former Beatles star, played on an historic guitar. A cassette case scattered into the Dakota archway as murderer Mark David Chapman stood over John Lennon. ![]()
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