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John Lennon: Milk and Honey

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Polydor Records
Released: 1984.01.09
Time:
 36:49
Category: Pop/Rock
Producer(s): John Lennon, Yoko Ono
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.johnlennon.com
Appears with: The Beatles
Purchase date: 2014
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] I'm Stepping Out (Lennon) - 4:06
[2] Sleepless Night (Ono) - 2:34
[3] I Don't Wanna Face It (Lennon) - 3:22
[4] Don't Be Scared (Ono) - 2:45
[5] Nobody Told Me (Lennon) - 3:34
[6] O' Sanity (Ono) - 1:05
[7] Borrowed Time (Lennon) - 4:29
[8] Your Hands (Ono) - 3:04
[9] (Forgive Me) My Little Flower Princess (Lennon) - 2:28
[10] Let Me Count the Ways (Ono) - 2:17
[11] Grow Old with Me (Lennon) - 3:07
[12] You’re the One (Ono) - 3:56

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


John Lennon - Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals, Producer
Yoko Ono - Vocals, Producer
John Tropea - Guitar
Earl Slick - Guitar
Howard Johnson - Horn
Jimmy Maelen - Percussion
Elliott Randall - Guitar
Gordon Grody - Vocals
Billy Alessi - Vocals
Bobby Alessi - Vocals
Pete Cannarozzi - Synthesizer
Andy Newmark - Drums
Paul Griffin - Drums
Neil Jason - Bass
Arthur Jenkins - Percussion
Tony Levin - Bass
Steve Love - Guitar
Hugh Mccracken - Guitar
Wayne Pedziwiatr - Bass
George Small - Keyboards
Peter Thom - Vocals
Ed Walsh - Keyboards
Kurt Yahjian - Vocals

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Milk and Honey was conceived as a companion piece to Double Fantasy. Each is subtitled "A Heart Play," and while the earlier album was meant to be something of a healing ritual (coming after John and Yoko's eighteen-month separation and Lennon's subsequent five-year "retirement" from recording), its successor seems designed as a portrait of domestic bliss. According to Ono's liner notes, she and Lennon consciously adopted the image of themselves as the reincarnation of Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning for Milk and Honey; the album jacket even reproduces verses by the Brownings next to lyrics by John and Yoko.

Unfortunately, the songs on the album don't bear comparison to the work of such illustrious writers. Four of the six new Lennon compositions recycle basic rock & roll licks to accompany simple, repetitive, even clichéd lyrics ("Living on borrowed time," "I'm stepping out," et cetera). "Nobody Told Me," the first single from Milk and Honey, begins promisingly with an energetic riff reminiscent of the Beatles' "Eight Days a Week," but it immediately lapses into a routine melody with unevenly rhymed lyrics that barely make sense ("There's Nazis in the bathroom just below the stairs/Always something happening and nothing going on"). Meanwhile, Ono's songs range from "Sleepless Night," a pleasantly spacey monologue, to "Your Hands," a lumbering production number with lyrics sung in Japanese and breathily translated into English (e.g., "Your hands/Your hands/So beautiful").

The most interesting Lennon song is also the album's silliest. "(Forgive Me) My Little Flower Princess" sounds like something translated from a corny Japanese opera yet rendered slightly ominous by two minor-key chords. There are other bits of goofiness throughout the album — like ad libs, scat singing and funny count-offs ("Eins, zwei, hickle, fickle!")—which seem to confirm that these are rough tracks. Still, they paint a delightful portrait of Lennon as a cut-up. And despite the erratic quality of the material, the album sounds great. The production by Lennon and Ono (conspicuously uncredited is Jack Douglas, who coproduced Double Fantasy) is precise and crystalline, and they utilize many of the same top-notch session musicians as on Double Fantasy.

The centerpiece of Milk and Honey is a pair of songs specifically inspired by two of the Brownings' classic poems. Presented in rough, homemade versions, they're a little embarrassing. Lennon's "Grow Old with Me" has the stately feel of "Imagine," but it's unlikely that it will become the standard — "the kind that they would play in church every time a couple gets married" — that Lennon hoped it would. And Ono's "Let Me Count the Ways" expresses vague sentiments ("It's like that lake in the mountains you heard about/It's like that autumn sky that stays so blue") that have little in common with Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

On "You're the One," which closes the album, Ono sings, "In the world's eye we were Laurel and Hardy/In our minds we were Heathcliff and Cathy/...In reality we were just a boy and a girl who never looked back." John and Yoko may have wanted to present themselves as a typical boy and girl blessed by a unique love, but almost everyone else knew them as rich, exotic, eccentric celebrities — anything but typical.

Still, they clearly loved each other deeply—just look at them on the cover of Milk and Honey, blending into one face as they kiss. Perhaps the saddest thing about Lennon's premature death is that he and Yoko were on the verge of sharing with the world, through their art, real insights into an extraordinary relationship that had survived extremely rocky times. At the time Double Fantasy and Milk and Honey were made, John and Yoko were still reassuring themselves and imagining a future together. That's why the most moving song on Milk and Honey is Yoko's "Don't Be Scared," which captures the excitement of the emotional adventure they were on: "Sun in the east/Moon in the west/Our boat's moving slow/There's no land in sight at all/Away we go." Too bad for all of us that they didn't get further.

DON SHEWEY - March 1, 1984
RollingStone.com



When John Lennon was killed on Dec. 8, 1980, he was in the midst of recording the follow-up to the recently released ‘Double Fantasy.’ Those songs, combined with some outtakes from the ‘Double Fantasy’ sessions, were compiled by his widow, Yoko Ono on their album ‘Milk and Honey,’ which came out on Jan. 27, 1984.

‘Milk and Honey’ followed the same format as ‘Double Fantasy,’ with Lennon’s and Ono’s tracks alternating in the sequence. But where Ono’s contributions were fully completed recordings which dealt with her grief, Lennon’s were, apart from some editing and mixing, left in their raw, unfinished state.

And while this juxtaposition made for a moving statement by Ono on the loss of her soulmate, some sweetening and overdubs — with years of hindsight — might have been a better idea. Only ‘Nobody Told Me,’ a Top 5 hit, sounds fully realized. The other two singles, ‘I’m Stepping Out’ and the Carribean-tinged ‘Borrowed Time,’ hint at what could have been, but his other songs suffer from the circumstances.

An exception is ‘Grow Old With Me,’ a piano-and-drum-machine demo recorded in Bermuda in 1980. Its sparseness, coupled with Lennon’s soaring falsetto, takes on added poignancy in light of Lennon’s murder. It pairs nicely with Ono’s ‘Let Me Count the Ways,’ both of which were based on the poetry of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Ono’s pain on her songs is heartbreaking. “You made me free myself,” she sings to John on ‘You’re the One.’ Elsewhere, on ‘O’Sanity,’ she admits to her own difficulties in coping with his death. “I don’t know what to do with my sanity / When the world’s on the verge of calamity.” Still, the public was craving for anything that provided insight into Lennon’s mind in his final days. ‘Milk and Honey’ hit No. 11 on the Billboard 200 and was certified Gold.

Dave Lifton - January 27, 2014
UltimateClassicRock.com



The sessions for 1980's Double Fantasy were supposed to yield two albums, the second to be released at a future time, but Lennon's assassination tragically halted the project in its tracks. A bit over three years later, Yoko Ono issued tapes of many of the songs planned for that album under the title Milk and Honey, laid out in the same John-Yoko-John-Yoko dialogue fashion as its predecessor. Not unexpectedly, it's a rougher, less polished product, lacking the finishing touches and additional takes that Lennon most likely would have called for. Nevertheless, Lennon's songs at this point in their development were often quite strong, tougher than those on Double Fantasy in general, and the ad libs and studio chatter that might not have made the final cut give us more of a glimpse of Lennon's delightfully quirky personality. "Nobody Told Me," the advance single off the album, is a rollicking, quizzical piece of work, maybe the best thing to come out of John's 1980 sessions, despite the unfinished-sounding transition to the chorus. "Borrowed Time," another single, is a thoughtful, sparely worded meditation on growing older attached to a Caribbean beat. Yoko's contributions, while not as strong as John's, are surprisingly listenable -- the reggae-based "Don't Be Scared," in particular -- and more current in texture, and her lyrics do tend to answer John's songs. As the album comes toward the close, the tone turns sentimental, culminating with one of John's loveliest tunes, "Grow Old With Me," as presented on a home-recorded cassette in lieu of a studio recording. The ironies of this song and some of the other Lennon material are obviously poignant in the light of the cruel events of December 8, 1980; that and the fact that these songs haven't been as exposed as much as those on Double Fantasy lead some to prefer this sequel.

Richard S. Ginellv - All Music Guide



Originally released in 1984, four years after John Lennon's death, Milk & Honey is probably best thought of as a companion piece to the better-known Double Fantasy. Like Double Fantasy, Milk & Honey contains equal but separate contributions from Lennon and Ono: lashings of dreadful, self-indulgent arty noodling (mostly, but not exclusively, Ono's) interspersed with sharp, pugnacious songwriting (mostly, but not exclusively, Lennon's). The subject matter throughout is the one that preoccupies all of Lennon and Ono's collaborations, namely themselves and each other. This is, very occasionally, undeniably touching. It is much more often as cringe-inducing as overhearing cooing lovers on a bus - Lennon and Ono always believed that we could never have too much information. The best moments here are those infrequent ones when Lennon directs his gaze somewhere other than at the adoring eyes of Ono - notably the exuberant "Nobody Told Me." The extra tracks on this new edition are three new paeans to themselves by Lennon and Ono, and an interview with the pair recorded shortly before Lennon's death, in which he reiterates his subscription to the philosophy of absurd, naive utopianism that tends to make obvious sense to people rich enough to do as they please.

Andrew Mueller - Amazon.com



Milk and Honey is an album credited to John Lennon and Yoko Ono released in 1984. It is Lennon's eighth and final studio album, and the first posthumous release of Lennon's music, having been recorded in the last months of his life during and following the sessions for their 1980 album Double Fantasy. It was assembled by Yoko Ono in association with the Geffen label.

After a falling out with David Geffen, whose Geffen Records had initially released Double Fantasy, Ono moved future projects to Polydor Records, which initially released Milk and Honey. EMI, home of Lennon's entire recorded output—including that with The Beatles—acquired this and all Lennon releases in the late 1990s. Predictably, the reaction to Milk and Honey was less fanatical than the one that greeted Double Fantasy, but it was still well-received, peaking at No. 3 in the UK and No. 11 in the US, where it went gold. Jack Douglas, who had co-produced Double Fantasy with Lennon and Ono, also had input into the initial sessions for Milk and Honey, though Ono declined to credit him after their professional relationship soured following Lennon's death.

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