John Lennon 1980 footage -Insanely Uber Rare

That Youtube OP has a real identity problem!
Some great stuff, but... ?

 

Much of the sessions were video taped but John thought he looked like a bird and had all the video footage destroyed...or based on that clip...was it?

 

He actually died, most of the ones I've seen have been reposted by someone else.

 

No reason to curse at me, I'm just saying he aged a lot in those last five years.

 

Amazing footage. Sad at the same time of what was to come. Just makes you miss John even more. Exceptional footage thanks for sharing it.

 

Listening to "A Hard Day's Night" right now, and clicked on the link....tears in my eyes.

Thanks for posting.

 

I think he was genuinely content for maybe the first time in his life.
Makes his death all the more heartbreaking.

 

Had my (small) wedding reception there!

 

The most odd thing is John not making a proper video for Starting Over. You would think by 1980 videos were essential

 

Looks fine to me. Like a normal healthy 40 yo guy. Some people see what they want to see

 

They were far from essential until about two years later. MTV blew that all up in 1982. A video might get shown once on a late night TV program but they weren't the vehicle of promotion that they were after MTV debuted.

 

John and Yoko were on a macrobiotic diet

 

Sadly a lot of people take the nonsense in Goldman's book as fact.

 

Yes the five years spent being a stay at home dad/ husband were good for him. Off the merry go round and finally at peace and truly happy...and then

 

Yep.
I do wonder if him and Yoko would've stayed together had he not been killed. From what you hear from people who were around them both, their relationship was pretty much a sham by that point. It seems like they were really just together for Sean and the whole immigration thing.

I think May was good for him, probably better than Yoko in many ways.

 

That brings back memories. I spent a lot of time in law school playing the 'trotters between classes.

JcS

 

Don't know about Yoko but I'd agree that May was good for John.

 

Loved the clip. John looks happy and the whole thing isc incredibly sad. As for John’s appearance I remember reading somewhere that Jack Douglas recounting his last conversation with John where he had discussed something serious—the implication was a health issue—but that Dougkas would never discuss the details of the conversation.

 

Sorry, I’m not going to defend Goldman per se, but what evidence do we have that John and Yoko’s version of the last five years is correct? To hear them tell it, it was, more or less, happy and content. Then Philip Norman—hardly a controversial biographer—reports in 2008, per Yoko’s own belated admission, that Yoko was on heroin in the late seventies/early eighties. John, apparently, had suspicions but didn’t really know—because the couple spent so little time together. Peter Doggett, also a respected biographer, likewise reports eating disorders and continued struggles with drug abuse.

Some people want to believe John and Yoko’s version of events without thinking critically. That’s fine, but almost forty years after Lennon’s death, the rest of us are entitled to ask questions about the accepted narrative. Lennon, that seeker of truth, deserves nothing less.

 

Look I love John, but come on, footage and photos from 1980 show a John whose got to be 15-20 pounds lighter than he was in 1974/75, and he wasn't overweight in 1975 by any means. He was trim but healthy looking then. John in 1980 looks even thinner than he did in late 1966/1967, his other year of dramatic weight loss. It's pretty rare to be thinner at 40 than you were at 27 unless you start at 27 as overweight, which John for certain was not.

We can love him and be fans but still acknowledge the obvious. He was very, very thin in 1980. Look at his sunken cheeks. Look at his neck! He's the kind of thin, if he was a close friend of yours and you saw him for the first time in 3 months you'd go "Are you eating, man! Have a sandwich!"

John himself admitted it and didn't release some footage that was shot. It's not mean-spirited to agree with the man himself.

 

Private video not meant for the public.

 

I don't think that's true, though. One of the reasons they began MTV is that there were many videos to show at the time. They had really caught on around 1979-80. It wasn't as if they started MTV and THEN people started making music videos. Even Paul made one for Coming Up in 1980.

 

was he still on heroin then or given up?

 

I laughed out loud when I read this, as I was just about to open the sandwich I bought at the 7-11 convenience store. Egg salad, ham and cheese and tuna salad, with a hot tea - 313 calories. So, a sandwich in Japan might not have helped him! Seriously, though, by Japanese standards, John looks thin, but not unhealthy. Celine Dion, on the other hand, clearly is suffering from something.

 

I was there. I hardly ever saw music videos until MTV. Sometimes they'd turn up on Don Kirschner's Rock Concert instead of a live performance, and I'd think, "Wow, how lame to do a video instead of a live performance." I'm not saying that there weren't ANY videos, but they weren't a gotta-do-it thing like they were after '82. Especially for a old-school guy like John Lennon. They were lucky to get an album out of him.