Everybody knows the moment in 1974 when John Lennon and Paul McCartney ventured as close as they’d ever get to reigniting the old Fab Four flame.
During Lennon’s supposed ‘Lost Weekend‘ – the 18-month whirlwind of drink and drugs amid a romantic break from Yoko Ono for his personal assistant, May Pang – the sessions for Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats, which Lennon was producing, descended to a very messy late-night jam session one evening, pulling in everybody from Stevie Wonder to Rolling Stones sax player Bobby Keys.
Swinging by during that time was McCartney and his wife, Linda, to lend their respective drum and organ skills. Fuelled by mountainous levels of alcohol and cocaine, the slapdash recording would eventually see the light of day in 1992 as the A Toot and a Snore in ’74 bootleg, a document that stands better as a piece of rock mythology than its sloppy end result.
By all accounts, the pair enjoyed a warm rapport that belied the previous years’ public sniping and acrimonious litigation following The Beatles’ split in 1970. From Imagine’s cutting ‘How Do You Sleep?’ to Los Angeles studio parties, Lennon and McCartney’s road to the much dreamed-of musical double-up looked ever more plausible. Such pally hangouts and half-entertained collaborations found further spark when crossing paths with the UK’s biggest pop phenomena since ‘All My Loving’ was first strummed on The Ed Sullivan Show, unleashing Beatlemania on the States.
In 1974, David Bowie had started to sense glam’s glitter turning stale. T Rex wasn’t hitting the anthemic bullseye anymore, and Roxy Music had toned down the superhero clobber in favour of frontman Bryan Ferry’s drift toward chanteur sophisticate. While still boasting an anthem like ‘Rebel, Rebel’ that stood tall with anything from the Ziggy Stardust songbook, that year’s Diamond Dogs would look further afield to the burgeoning world of Philadelphia soul and disco, draped in a grander theatrical showmanship. It was during this creative flux that Bowie was surprised by Lennon and McCartney knocking on his Pierre Hotel door in New York in the wee early hours.
“The two of them had been out on the town for the evening,” Bowie recalled on BBC Radio 6 Music in 2004. “[Lennon] said, ‘Can we come in? I’m sick.’” Despite grappling with his new Sony reel-to-reel videotape recorder and immersive himself in amateur short film making, the Cracked Actor let the two Beatles in for a social.
“It was great,” he revealed. “We spent the evening just rapping and talking. There was kind of a strange thing between [Lennon and McCartney]. There’s a little bit of distance every now and again. But that must have been the first time they’d been back together since the big bust-up”.
It was amid this surprise visit that Lennon and McCartney reportedly had suggested a side-project with the ‘Starman’ singer, under the acronymed group moniker David Bowie and the Beatles. “I think they wanted to call it DDB,” Bowie recollected. “But, you know, the next morning, it just never came to anything”.
It’s hard to envision just how DBB would have sounded. While Bowie was never enamoured with McCartney’s Wings and solo work, he was always a deep admirer of Lennon, going as far as dubbing him his “greatest mentor”. The only taste the music world will ever have is 1975’s ‘Fame’ from Young Americans, the funk number co-written by Lennon that shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, his first ever number one in the States.
