John Lennon and Bill Evans’ Biographies Underscore Joy and Pain of Final Months
Two biographies attempt to undo the tragic narratives associated with two legendary musicians.
Never before have two musical legends been more defined by their tragic final moments — John Lennon and Bill Evans. Both musicians and band leaders died within months of each other in 1980 — Evans to his demons on September 15, Lennon to the bullets of a deranged fan on December 8. Because of the frankly sad nature of their demises, fans and critics tend to view both men through the lens of their deaths, not necessarily the whole of their musical careers or their final artistic output. It’s unfortunate since much of their music from that time deserves a second listen and tends to be overshadowed by the weight of the “final chapter.”
Two biographies — Starting Over: The Making of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy by Ken Sharp and Times Remembered: The Final Years of the Bill Evans Trio by Joe La Barbera and Charles Levin — provide much-needed counterpoints to the narratives associated with Lennon and Evans’ later months.
Just Like Starting Over
(Double Fantasy) It’s a flower, a type of freesia, but what it means to us is that if two people picture the same image at the same time, that is the secret. You can be together but projecting two different images, and either whoever’s the stronger at the time will get his or her fantasy fulfilled, or you will get nothing but mishmash. — John Lennon quoted in Starting Over
The portrait of John Lennon depicted via oral histories in Starting Over is particularly poignant, in that one of his colleagues at the time described the Double Fantasy sessions (a male/female interplay concept album made with his wife, artist Yoko Ono, subtitled “A Heart Play”) as proof that the famously embattled musician was, at long last, “well.” The Lennon pictured in Starting Over is a far cry from the angry, disjointed man showcased in drug-addled early 1970s Rolling Stone magazine interviews. Indeed, photos from 1980 show a tanned, sleek Lennon in great spirits, ready to return to work after five years of being a “house husband” to his younger son, Sean, born to him and Ono in 1975.
Again, Starting Over is written more as an oral history from colleagues, interviewers, and musicians who worked with him on Double Fantasy, so it doesn’t focus on much of Lennon’s life and career before that time. That’s not meant to be a criticism of the book — it shows Lennon as being focused on the future, moving onward, and even interested in having a high-tech world tour as 1981 dawned. There’s none of the man who was often depicted as highly eccentric as his love affair with Ono blossomed (complete with “Bed Ins” and “Bagism”) during the late 1960s. The 1980 version seemed chronically normal, in a good place in life, and committed to his family. Indeed, like the song on Double Fantasy, he was “Starting Over.”
Critical reception of Double Fantasy was decidedly mixed when the album was released shortly before Lennon’s death. Many reviewers thought the album had a “middle-of-the-road” soft rock sound and preferred the experimental nature of Ono’s songs. Today, Double Fantasy is viewed as a worthy coda to Lennon’s career and a fine final statement — he was at long last secure with himself and his place in the world. Starting Over is a beautiful read, and its overriding positivity makes the events on the evening of December 8, 1980 all the more abrupt and horrific. However, what the reader takes away is the triumph of Lennon’s final months creating a classic.
You Must Believe In Spring
Music should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It’s easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That’s the real mission of art. The artist has to find something within himself that’s universal and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate to a person without his realizing it… enrichment, that’s the function of music. — Bill Evans
In contrast, Bill Evans was far from well in 1980. He was separated from his wife, and his beloved brother, Harry, had shot himself a year earlier after a long battle with mental illness. Evans himself was deteriorating rapidly under the weight of his longstanding heroin and cocaine addictions. Ever the perfectionist, the Evans of the 1960s — still drugged but stately, tall, well dressed, and elegantly bespectacled — probably would’ve bristled at the 1980 Evans who frequently went on stage looking disheveled, rushing his tempos. Many love to conflate Evans’ decline with the sadness of his art and vice versa. There’s the popular “chicken or the egg” argument — did his art contribute to the madness, or was it his depression that made his playing so emotional, so evocative, so instantly recognizable?
We won’t ever know this — and it probably doesn’t really matter — because on September 15, 1980, Evans died after being transported to The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City via taxicab, a victim of his addictions. The prevailing feeling among several of his friends and colleagues was relief — not because they didn’t love him, but because his suffering was so apparent and total during his final months.
We know the story of his final days and death because his drummer, Joe La Barbera, released Times Remembered in 2021, and indeed, was one of the passengers sitting by a hemorrhaging Evans during that final taxicab ride. But La Barbera’s book isn’t all despair and gloom. The author reveals the ironically “addictive” joy he found in playing in Evans’ trio, a group that could predict what each member would do at any given time onstage. He also reveals touching memories of what Evans called “The Joy of Discovery.” Evans is shown as a remarkably humble and brilliant teacher who encouraged other musicians not to play just like him. It wasn’t that Evans didn’t want to be imitated or flattered — but he understood that other musicians needed to discover their unique voices to find artistic fulfillment.
Despite his failing physical health, Evans could still conjure the phenomenon of “Bill Evans” onstage in his final months. An exquisite performance of “Re: Person I Knew” performed by the trio (featuring bassist Marc Johnson) at August 1980’s Molde Jazz Festival in Norway shows a group that seemingly communicates by telepathy — no note is wrong. This clip and its excellence are especially heartbreaking not only because of the sheer sadness of the music but also because Evans had five weeks left on terra firma. Times Remembered — a memoir elegantly befitting the man it memorializes — makes you wish Bill Evans had known he was Bill Evans and we’d had more time with this genius.
Watch The Bill Evans Trio perform “Re: Person I Knew” in August 1980.
****
Both Starting Over and Times Remembered are available on Amazon and other booksellers.
