Recording: I’m Losing You, I’m Moving On, Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) by John Lennon and Yoko Ono – 12 August 1980

Tuesday 12 August 1980 | John Lennon, Studio

The fifth recording session for John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy album took place on 12 August 1980 at the Hit Factory in New York City. Three tracks were worked on: Lennon’s ‘I’m Losing You’, Ono’s ‘I’m Moving On’, and Lennon’s ‘Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)’. All three were included on the finished album.

‘I’m Losing You’ and ‘I’m Moving On’: Cheap Trick in the studio

Producer Jack Douglas brought in Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen and drummer Bun E Carlos to play on the backing tracks for both songs. The session also featured bassist Tony Levin and keyboard player George Small. The band flew in from Montreal on a day off before departing for a Japan tour.

“We got a call about a month or two ahead of time from our office with the message, ‘Bun E, call Jack.’ I called him and Jack said, ‘John Lennon is gonna record and I want you to play drums on this song, “I’m Losing You”.’ Then he said, ‘Don’t tell anybody,’ and I immediately told the other guys in the band. It was all big top secret. The reason it was top secret is CBS was trying to sign Lennon. They had Ringo and they had Paul on the label, they wanted to get all four Beatles signed to CBS and they were battling with Geffen over it.”

“We went into the studio and we were introduced to John and Yoko. When you meet these famous guys they’re always shorter than you think. John was smaller than I expected. He goes, ‘Oh, you’re the guys from Cheap Trick. They told me your name, but they didn’t tell me what band you were in.’ John was really friendly. He was Mr Nice Guy.”

“They played us a cassette demo of ‘I’m Losing You’ with him on acoustic guitar. He’d been down to Bermuda and had two ghetto blasters. He’d sit there and record guitar and vocal on one and then aim it at the other one and lean over and do overdubs like that on the second machine.”

“The whole band tracked the song live. John played guitar and sang, I played drums, Rick played guitar, Tony Levin played bass, and George Small was on keyboards. John was like Chuck Berry, he was the perfect rhythm guitar player. I thought, ‘Oh here we go. I don’t even have to do anything except sit and play along.’”

“While Rick was doubling his solo, I was in the booth with Lennon and he said, ‘Do you want to smoke a joint?’ I remember John said, ‘Your guitar work is great. Clapton did something like this on “Cold Turkey”, but he could only do one lick.’ I said, ‘We’re just trying to give it a Plastic Ono Band feel.’ John was having a good time on that session. We all had a lot of laughs.”

“‘I’m Losing You’ was supposed to crossfade into ‘I’m Moving On’. Yoko was in the vocal booth and John was in the control room with Jack. John gets on the talkback and goes, ‘Mother dear, perhaps you can do the first verses like Tony and then do the boys’ arrangement after the first verse.’ He called Rick and I ‘the boys’. Yoko turned to John and gave him a look and said, ‘F**k you very much, John!’ and everybody started laughing.”

“The tracks never came out. Then in 1996 or 97 we heard from Yoko that they wanted to use our version of ‘I’m Losing You’ on the Lennon box set. It was neat that it was finally out there. Yoko asked us if we wanted to do a music video for it with Tony Levin and we did it.”

— Bun E Carlos, Starting Over, Ken Sharp

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‘Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)’

In the evening, the album’s core musicians worked on Lennon’s ‘Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)’. The musicians were guitarists Hugh McCracken and Earl Slick, bassist Tony Levin, keyboard player George Small, drummer Andy Newmark, and percussionist Arthur Jenkins Jr.

“John played a piano part for me and I harmonized his original line, which had an Asian flair, and he didn’t object. Listening to the album recently, that song hit me the strongest of anything I heard. It’s got that great line, ‘Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.’ Originally, they wanted to hire a steel drum orchestra for the song. The number that was bandied about was twenty-plus. They finally decided that they could get the effect with one. He was a real Jamaican steel drum player and I had to teach him the song at the session.”

— George Small, keyboards, Double Fantasy, Starting Over, Ken Sharp

‘Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)’ was written by Lennon for his son Sean, born on 9 October 1975. The song contains the line “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” — one of the most quoted lines in popular music, often misattributed but originating here with Lennon.

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