One spring morning in New York, John Lennon awoke from a vivid, other-worldly experience. His mind was filled with refracted images, and the language of dreams. Reaching instinctively for his yellow bedside pad and Flair marker pen, he scrawled down a string of esoteric words. Fresh from this beguiling daze, he also noted the subconscious fragments of an intriguing melody. From this account would come one of his most timeless compositions. ‘#9 Dream’ found Lennon surrendering to his higher artistic instincts in one of the most inspired and divine-sounding piece of music he ever created.
John told May that he’d heard two women echoing his name. On hearing a song being sung in spirit, Lennon witnessed two female spirits engage in a surreal dance. “One of the women in the dream was actually his Aunt Mimi,” Pang claimed during conversation with Radio WBAI in New York in April 2013. “In the dream he had, he heard her voice.” Mimi’s voice was represented by May in the song, although it would, in turn, later be mistaken for Ono. “He woke up and wrote the whole song, which he literally dreamed up,” Pang would later relate. “And it always comes just as he was going to sleep. All these lines came swirling into his head, and he had to force himself back up to write them, or else it’s gone by the morning.”
Pang clearly admired Lennon’s thrilling aptitude for wordplay, taking simple phrases and creating what became great songs. Having been fortunate to observe Lennon writing lyrics on numerous occasions, his inspiring writing technique obviously fascinated her. “He had what you call God-given talent. He was so gifted that he could turn whatever he wrote into a song.” Every so often, John stopped to play May what he had written to gauge her reaction. “I would watch him and think: ‘These are very simple words, but the way he phrases it is amazing.’ He was such a quick thinker, and words came so easily to him. He used to doodle and to write down anything – and everyone and everything inspired him – and these jottings would eventually turn up in his songs.”
‘#9 Dream’’s creative life had begun as ‘So Long Ago’, its title taken from the song’s opening line, before Lennon briefly toyed with the more obscure working title of ‘Walls And Bridges’. It didn’t fit the song, and would eventually be used to title the accompanying album. Lennon, Pang recalls, was focused, if not ‘trancelike’ during the song’s creative process. Lennon’s production, and the song’s ethereal sound and mood lulled the listener into his dream. Bathed in its tactile, golden glow, the song recounts a sense of aural and visual bliss. Having ventured down the sidewalk, time and place blurred as Lennon entered a surrealist landscape of shimmering foliage and streams of sound. As a complement to the dreamy vision which partially inspired him, the song’s tranquility was pitched somewhere between golden slumber and thrilling higher awareness.
Lennon would later classify ‘#9 Dream’ as an account of a psychedelic experience, a startling, inspiring verification of his own experiences. “We try and describe the dream to each other,” he asserted, “to verify what we know, what we believe to be inside each other.” While his lyrics displayed disbelief at the blissful experience, they were tempered by true faith. Lennon also tried to convey a sense of unreality for the listener. Lennon’s sentiments (‘What more can I say?’) strove to describe this sense of rapture, and to articulate this speech of the heart. ‘#9 Dream’ was memorably described by David Cavanagh as a “dream song which became a dream in itself, by recounting the dream which inspired it”.
Early song lyrics featured an account of his dream imagery, although the chorus had yet to arrive. As memories of an enthralling experience floated through the song, Lennon was revisiting and reconnecting with his past. The song’s opening line, ‘So long ago... was it in a dream?’ from which it took its initial working title, hints at his fonder recollections of the Fab Four.
Come Together: Lennon and McCartney in the Seventies by Richard White
#9 DREAM. (Ultimate Mix 2020) John Lennon w The Plastic Ono Nuclear Band
Vocals: John LennonDrums: Jim KeltnerGuitar: Jesse Ed DavisAcoustic Guitars: Eddie Mottau and Dr. DreamBass: Klaus VoormannElectric Piano: Nicky HopkinsClavinet: Ken AscherPercussion: Arthur JenkinsThe 44th Street Fairies: May Pang, Lori Burton, Joey Dambra and John Lennon.
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