John Lennon would have celebrated his 80th birthday on October 9th, if he had not been torn out of life in a dramatic way almost exactly 40 years ago, on December 8th, 1980. Shortly before that, on 17 November, he had released "Double Fantasy" with Yoko Ono, his last album in his lifetime, which was to be the beginning of a major comeback after a five-year retreat into private life. eclipsed sets out on a search for clues in the fateful year 1980.
For John Lennon, the second half of the 1970s was quite unspectacular - no comparison to the wild 60s with the Beatles and the turbulent first years of his solo career, in which he had appeared as a political activist and uncompromising musician who had searched the depths of his soul for injuries and shared this experience with his audience. He had marked the wild man as he celebrated the legendary 18-month "lost weekend" with Harry Nilsson and other mates, yet he had repented and returned to Yoko Ono. In 1975, Lennon had released an album directed by Phil Spector featuring the favourite songs of his youth, which he called simply "Rock 'n' Roll", and after this evocation of his past, he retreated into private life. John Lennon spent five years in his luxurious apartment in the Dakota building at 72nd Street and Central Park West in New York. During this time he took care of his son Sean, born in October 1975, and, according to his own information, became a bread-baking houseman.
Around the years in the Dakota there are different stories. Lennon himself spread the myth of the tired rock star who longed for family warmth and peace. His biographer Philip Norman confirmed this image in 2008, while Albert Goldman's scandalous 1988 Lennon biography painted a completely different picture: that of a heroin-addicted, irascible, self-sacrificing person who made life hell for his family, although Yoko, according to Goldman, was not much better. Now, many of Goldman's hair-raising claims about John Lennon's life have long since been refuted, so his description of the Dakota years is only partly credible, but there is a touch of mystery about that time even today. 1980 was the year in which Lennon decided he had had enough of the seclusion of a luxury apartment. They say every time he heard the omnipresent wings, he'd get a rumbling in his head and think, "That could be me, too." By early 1980, he began to think more and more about making a comeback. But hardly anyone expected that the triggering moment would be a newly discovered passion of the notorious couch potato: sailing ...
