John Lennon is back but trust him to deflate the expectations that have been invested in his return. The message of Double Fantasy is that he and Yoko won't be anybody's heroes if they can't be each other's. This is a family album, Yoko's as much as his.
In his five years of seclusion as a house-husband, John Lennon's reputation as the last rebel hold-out of the Beatles, received further inflation. Many, this writer included, took him to be a fellow who would both comprehend and endorse the new rock that flared in his absence, but Double Fantasy caters to none of those hopes and beliefs – on this album's evidence, many will decide we have a case similar to post-army Presley in Lennon. Already the 'sold-out' notices are being prepared but be careful – the matter could be more complicated.
But first a summary for the Trade Descriptions Act. Double Fantasy is sub-titled a 'Heart Play', 14 songs divided equally between Lennon and Ono that present both the joys and the toils of their relationship, and hardly acknowledges realities outside their love. With the exception of two discoid tracks where Yoko slipstreams Grace Jones, Double Fantasy breaks no new stylistic ground – it could have been recorded at any point in the last five if not eight years. Wings fans will like it a lot.
John and Yoko may have rejoiced in being the odd couple alongside Paul and Linda but ten years after the Beatles split, they have arrived at conclusions not dismissal to those their rivals drew then. Their priorities are as husband and wife, father and mother, lover and lover now deciding that those careers are more important than other roles whereby rock idolators would wish to cramp their privacy and deny and delay their maturity. They have chosen life over art and the corollary of that decision is that life also means acceptance of middle-age.
Lennon must bluntly admit the choice and its consequences on the album's best song 'Watching The Wheels'. Putting the question "Don't you miss the big time boy you're no longer on the ball", he's happy to answer in carpet slippers, "I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round/I really love to watch them roll/No longer riding on the merry-go-round/I just had to let it go".
All that remains are tracks that try not to be so silly love songs. Sometimes they work, something they don't and before any member of the anti-Yoko league intervenes, let it be said that aren't indulgences bargained past David Geffen in return for Lennon's signature on the contract.
Rather her problem is that she fails to alight on one vocal style. She's at her convincing with the hard disco of 'Every May Has A Woman That Loves Him' and endearing on the giddy, flippant cabaret of 'I'm Your Angel' but she quivers through the mock gospel of 'Hard Times Are Over' and then to compound indecisiveness, fakes an orgasm on ‘Kiss Kiss Kiss’ and closes 'I'm Moving On' with her personal clicking vocal gymnastics. Alongside Lennon's consistency of tone, her changes are distracting.
With only seven songs to contribute, Lennon should be expected to rise above the professional to the inspirational but only three could be short-listed as possible standards, the two ballads on the album's better second-side, the aforementioned 'Watching The Wheels' and 'Woman', and an affecting homily to his son, Sean, 'Beautiful Boy'. 'Clean Up Time' is a paste-up of Dr. John, 'Dear Yoko' ditto of Buddy Holly and through all his songs, the emotions Double Fantasy purports to express only partially surface.
The album is warm but never ecstatic, critical but never painful – and, whether due to their mood or the production, inhabits the temperate but never the tropical or Arctic zones of the emotions. The lyrics of Double Fantasy may talk on the dark side but the music doesn't follow.
Double Fantasy is the scrap-book of their search for a goldean mean, a warming against the extreme of rock and a partial recommendation of normality from an expert pair. But their plain folks pose can be undermined by ostentation – Yoko just has to reassure John "Your mind has changed the world" – and the closing celebration of their love's triumph 'Hard Times Are Over' comes dangerously close to smugness when they forget that the cultivation of their relationship is unthreatened by the financial pressures other couples face.
Agreeable, charming and sometimes useful advice, Double Fantasy comes from a family it would be a pleasure to have in the neighbourhood. Just don't expect to invite them to all tomorrow's parties.