There are few musical claims to fame more solid than “former Beatle,” and after the dissolution of that singularly great band, John Lennon carved out a career befitting his personality. Like the man himself, his solo output could be tender, confrontational, introspective, and reflective of the world at large, sometimes all at once; his famously turbulent personal life was always mirrored in his recordings, and when he found it appropriate — after the 1975 birth of his second son, Sean — he did not hesitate to walk away from music altogether, regardless of the fact that he was one of the biggest rock stars in the world.
In 1980, after a five-year hiatus, Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono dropped the double album “Double Fantasy,” a sterling comeback effort that contained the heartfelt, moving singles “(Just Like) Starting Over” and “Woman,” both tributes to Lennon’s love for Ono. The comeback would prove to be bittersweet in the extreme. Just three weeks after the album’s release, on December 8, 1980, Lennon was shot to death by an assassin outside his apartment building in New York City. In his final interview, conducted by radio hosts Dave Sholin and Laurie Kaye earlier that day, Lennon looked forward to the coming decade, saying, “Wasn’t the ’70s a drag, you know? Here we are, well let’s try to make the ’80s good, you know? ‘Cause it’s still up to us to make what we can of it.”
