I reacted to the news of a remastered Double Fantasy with an overwhelming year. It is a good, maybe great album but it has so much baggage, so many bad memories, associated with it is difficult not to want to NOT listen to it despite “StartingOver” and “Watching The Wheels” and “Beautiful Boy and even Yoko’s “Beautiful Boys”.But Yoko is doing an unstripped version with this shocking admission: “John felt insecure about his voice so he always double tracked it”.
Wow.
Plus, and I guess this is true, the album was a little overproduced and might do well with a bare bones, listen to Lennon’s fingers pick the guitar, type mix.
I have heard some stripped down version on the excellent Anthology and the just Lennon and acoustic guitar “watching The Wheels” is precisely what I am expected and would be overjoyed o hear. You can really hear him move from strum to pick and he isn’t stretching his voice. The “aaaah’ before “People say I’m lazy” is just heartbreakingly lovely.
Fuck, I STILL MISS HIM!