John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy album was released 45 years ago this month and its producer, Jack Douglas, has been letting slip some secrets about the sessions.
Douglas, who’s now 80, appeared on Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast this week and
"And in fact, when we were doing Double Fantasy and word got out that maybe we were smoking pot after the session was over, and then Yoko would get, like, pissed off at us," Douglas said. "And she'd call us, she'd call us down into her office in Studio One. And John and I would be standing there like two school children."
He continued: "She yelled at us for, you know, 'What were you doing? You were blah blah blah blah blah.' And then she looked at me, and she said, 'You know, I can always get Phil (Spector) to do these sessions."
It was an idle threat, as Lennon, Douglas said, “hated” Spector. The last time the erratic producer had worked with Lennon was during the chaotic sessions for the Rock N’ Roll album six years previously when Spector, as was his wont, had started waving guns around in the studio.
"I hated him (Spector). And John and I looked at each other. And before I could do it, John went, 'Oh. Yeah,'" he said.
Lennon’s pet name for Ono was ‘mother’, it should be pointed out.
Anyway, Douglas delivered Double Fantasy successfully and there was enough material from the sessions to provide the bulk of Milk And Honey, a posthumous John and Yoko album which was released in January 1984.
After Lennon’s murder, Douglas continued to produce and worked with Aerosmith on their two most recent albums, Honkin’ On Bobo and Music From Another Dimension!, as well as the New York Dolls’ 2006 reunion album Someday It Will Please Us To Remember Even This.
