John Lennon named his final album for a freesia, a rare cultivar he encountered in a Bermuda garden.
Double Fantasy Sculpture, a tribute to John Lennon at Bermuda Botanical Garden
Photo: John Lennon Memorials
Double Fantasy, released in November 1980.
After more than three mysterious years— childrearing? shooting junk? trying ultra-seclusion after decades of percolation through the public nervous system? – John Lennon was emerging in late 1980. He and wife Yoko Ono had produced Double Fantasy, released November 17, and three weeks later Lennon was murdered outside their New York apartment.
We learned recently that the album title refers to a cultivar of freesia. John had seen the plant that summer during a trip to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens. And reportedly the name “appealed to Lennon’s concept for the album” then in the works, “presenting his songs alongside Ono’s, a collection celebrating their lives together and offering themselves once again to the world.”
“Double Fantasy” freesia
Photo: Baer and Kho
After a few false leads, we think we’ve found a photo of freesia ‘Double Fantasy” – though only a black and white (the LP cover was black and white also, a tender picture of the couple kissing).
The flower photo comes from J. Baer and Y.O. Kho’s study “An Investigation into the Cause of Sterility in Double-Flowered Freesia and the Possibility of Restoring Fertility,” a scholarly work published in Euphytica, 1971.
“The sterility of double-flowered freesia is caused by the abnormal structure of the flower,” write Baer and Kho. However, “it proved possible, by cultivation at higher temperatures, to induce fertile single flowers in a double-flowered variety. In winter, under natural light conditions, the most favourable temperature range is 18–20°C. In this way progeny can be obtained from seed and the application of the usual breeding methods to double-flowered freesias is made possible.”
Bed-In for peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel, 1969
Photo: National Museums Liverpool
Lennon and Ono’s relationship—including marriage, separation and reconciliation, pregnancy, co-parenting, and extensive collaboration –- survived all sorts of unnatural “light conditions.”
But not even the bitterest Beatle fan could call it “sterile.”
When you cross the street
Take my hand.
Life is what happens
while you’re busy making other plans.
Beautiful beautiful beautiful
Beautiful boy.
(Originally published: HFP December 7, 2010)
Update: John himself told Playboy magazine: that Double Fantasy “is a type of flower, a type of freesia, but what it means to us is that if two people picture the same image at the same time, that is the secret”. There’s an echo of Lennon’s great anthem “Come Together” here. That song, written in 1969, sprang from quite a different source: Timothy Leary’s ego. The college professor turned proponent of LSD had asked Lennon to write a slogan for his campaign (soon to be curtailed) for governor of California. Talk about fantasy!
Though John told his freesia story several more times, appreciative but scrupulous Bermudian gardeners have made public their doubts. This good article from the Royal Gazette discloses the many elements that don’t add up.
Edward Manuel, former director of the island’s Agriculture and Fisheries, who had worked in the gardens for 40 years “had no recollection of seeing a Double Fantasy freesia at the Botanical Gardens” and July, when Lennon paid his visit, was much too late to see any freesia in bloom. Others have speculated that in fact a “Double Fantasy” hibiscus had inspired Lennon. But Manuel couldn’t recall seeing one of those flowers in the garden either.
Double Fantasy Sculpture, a tribute to John Lennon at Bermuda Botanical Garden
Photo: John Lennon Memorials
Possibly it wasn’t a plant at all but the plant-label for a freesia that had been left on the grounds. After all, John was a poet not a botanist: the phrase alone may have set John dreaming about a new musical collaboration with Yoko Ono. “Freesia” too would have aroused the man who wrote “Imagine.”
Despite the floral mysteries that remain, the Bermuda Botanical Gardens didn’t let this promotional opportunity slip past. In June 2012, it unveiled a memorial: a steel monument nine feet tall depicting Lennon’s signature round spectacles, a guitar, and several stylized flowers. Lisa Outerbridge on staff at the Botanical Gardens told the Royal Gazette, “The Double Fantasy freesia is the number one question that is asked by people coming to the gardens on bus tours.” In the meantime, a plaque in the garden gracefully dodges the issue.
“The sculpture “Double Fantasy” is dedicated to the memory of John Lennon, whose last album was written in Bermuda and the title of which was inspired by a visit to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens”
To give flowers the last word: John’s special genius may never be surpassed, but “the sterility of double-flowered freesia” apparently has been overcome by horticultural wizards in the decades since 1980. You can see many sources for them though, as yet, we don’t find “Double Fantasy” itself for sale.
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