It really helps that Halloween is in the fall, so all of the department stores are trying to get rid of their white clothing at steep discounts! Yoko Ono: Target

And yet, Milk And Honey is a great John and Yoko record. It fully deserves its place in the tradition of Double Fantasy or their early avant-garde releases or any of the towering songs their names are jointly engraved upon, from ‘ Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ to ‘ Woman Is The Nigger Of The World’. We know that John was looking forward to a follow-up, to be called Milk And Honey, and that he believed he already had a lot of material. We can only speculate how closely it would have resembled the album we know, but there is not the slightest doubt that Milk And Honey is true to Lennon’s spirit. We should open our ears and welcome it. Get ready to perform your greatest hits as the most important member of the Beatles. It’s the perfect outfit of choice for your next music themed fancy dress party, festival or to re-create the boy band with a group of friends. Probably the most interesting thing to fly off the shelves at Partymania are Donald Trump masks, perhaps as people gear up for his second tilt at the White House next year. ‘I’ll risk doing a John Lennon and say that Halloween is now bigger than Christmas’ Get ready to look like you’ve stepped out from an iconic album cover as the famous John Lennon, with our John Lennon Beatles Costume. This costume is based on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover from the legendary group, The Beatles. Get ready to make a lasting impression and bring the entertainment as you become the leader of this world-famous incredible band. Not for the first time in his work, John owns up to his own shortcomings as a husband, this time in ‘(Forgive Me) My Little Flower Princess’, But the tropically mellow ‘ Borrowed Time’ suggest a man who is, in the last analysis, at peace with himself and enjoying his maturity. For her part, Yoko complements his self-portraits beautifully, with reflections on doubt (‘O Sanity’), eroticism (‘Your Hands’) and the poignantly romantic ‘You’re The One’.

Uploading

So we’ve sold quite a few police outfits, for example. And ladies seem to like anything with wings. Discretion must have been John’s middle name. During our marriage the only time that he gave me grounds for jealousy was at a private party and showing of A Magical Mystery Tour [ sic] – the disastrous television film that the boys wrote and produced themselves following Brian’s death and the Apple ventures. At the very heart of Milk And Honey, however, are two extraordinary songs. Yoko’s ‘Let Me Count The Ways’ and John’s ‘Grow Old With Me’ were inspired by the Victorian poets Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with whom the Lennons felt a deep affinity. These numbers were written for Double Fantasy, when John was on holiday in Bermuda and Yoko was in New York, recorded onto cassette, but then set aside for the next album. Now they sit together in the closing stages of Milk And Honey, perfect companion pieces. They hold the record in some place out of chronological time, eternally hopeful.

The Fun House and Partymania on George Street, Aberdeen. Image: Craig Munro/DC Thomson Donald Trump: Big in Aberdeen (at least at Halloween)

Sleeve notes

Studios: Hit Factory, New York; A and R Studios, New York; The Automatt, San Francsico; Sterling Sound, New York Surprisingly, Graeme said Halloween had now surpassed what we all assumed to be the biggest party season of them all. We’ve sold a load of ghost masks and Scream masks,” he said. “But people also want to be escaped convicts and killer clowns. Count The Ways,’ (Yoko Ono/Vocal and Piano) are from original cassette recordings by John and Yoko.