“He showed me the Rickenbacker he used with the Beatles at Shea Stadium. It still had the song list taped to the side”: Released weeks before his murder, John Lennon’s final album paired him with some of the era’s finest session guitarists

John Lennon, pictured at the Hit Factory recording studio in New York City on December 6, 1980.

“I thought long and hard about this,” says producer Jack Douglas. “I asked myself, ‘Am I selling John out?’” Douglas is talking about his 2010 stripped-down remix of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1980 album, Double Fantasy.

The disc is part of the massive rollout of reissued Lennon solo material that EMI recently prepared to commemorate what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday on October 9, 2010, and the 30th anniversary of his death on December 8, 1980.