Recording, mixing: Watching The Wheels by John Lennon and Yoko Ono

Record Plant, New York City
Producers: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Jack Douglas

A mixing session for John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy album took place on 29 September 1980.

It was for just one song: ‘Watching The Wheels’. While the song was being mixed, studio engineer Jon Smith and Lennon’s assistant Fred Seaman recorded sound effects for the end of the track. They included crowd noises and ambient sounds, which were assembled into a 30-second sound collage not dissimilar to parts of The Beatles’ 1968 track ‘Revolution 9’.

I’ll tell you what it is. One of the voices is me going, ‘God bless you, man, thank you, man, cross my palm with silver, you’ve got a lucky face,’ which is what the English guys who beg or want a tip say, and that’s what you hear me mumbling. And then we re-created the sounds of what Yoko and I call the Strawberries and Violin Room – the Palm Court at the Plaza hotel. We like to sit there occasionally and listen to the old violin and have a cup of tea and some strawberries. It’s romantic. And so the picture is, there’s this kind of street prophet, Hyde Park-corner-type guy who just watches the wheels going around. And people are throwing money in the hat. We faked that in the studio. We had friends of ours walking up and down, dropping coins in a hat. And he’s saying, ‘Thank you, thank you,’ and then you get in the horse carriage and you go around New York and go into the hotel and the violins are playing and then this woman comes on and sings about being an angel.