Flashback: Lennon Returns With ‘Double Fantasy’

It was 32 years ago Saturday (November 17th, 1980), that John Lennon and Yoko Ono released their comeback album Double Fantasy. The album marked Lennon's first release since his self-imposed five-year retirement from the music business in 1975, during which time he had become a self described "house husband" in Manhattan raising the couple's son Sean, while Yoko managed the couple's finances.

At the time of the album's release, Lennon did an interview with Playboy magazine in which he said that his songs on Double Fantasy came rushing out of him all at once. Contrary to what Lennon told the magazine, most of the music on Double Fantasy actually dated back several years, and it was not the only music he composed during his "retirement." Lennon had begun recording demos in 1976 for a pair of projects that never saw the light of day -- an unrealized seventh studio album called Between The Lines, and a musical based on his life with Yoko, called The Ballad Of John And Yoko, named after the 1969 Beatles song.