<\/p>\n The session in question was for Lennon<\/a>\u2019s Rock \u2019n\u2019 Roll, a mid-\u201970s covers vehicle. But to tell the story properly, we need to head back to 1969, when music publisher Morris Levy accused Lennon of lifting lyrics from Chuck Berry<\/a>\u2019s \u201cYou Can\u2019t Catch Me\u201d for the Beatles\u2019 Abbey Road cut \u201cCome Together.\u201d<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Levy sued, and after years of legal back-and-forth, they settled out of court. (Interestingly, Berry himself never seemed all that bothered and even made an appearance with Lennon in 1972 on the syndicated Mike Douglas Show.) Lennon\u2019s deal with Levy required him to record a few songs from Levy\u2019s publishing catalog. Lennon was only supposed to knock out a few covers and call it a day, but he instead used it as an excuse to make an entire album of the rock and roll classics he\u2019d grown up on.<\/p>\n He called his old buddy Phil Spector \u2014 who, as far as Lennon was concerned, had done a bang-up job on Let It Be and his 1971 solo opus, Imagine \u2014 to rally the musical troops and produce the sessions. It was all great on paper. But it quickly went to hell once the studio doors closed.<\/p>\n \n Lennon during his “Lost Weekend” in L.A. with his drinking buddies, the Hollywood Vampires. (from left) Lennon, Harry Nilsson, Alice Cooper and Micky Dolenz celebrate an early Thanksgiving at the Troubadour with singer Anne Murray (second from left), November 21, 1973. (Image credit: Richard Creamer\/Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n The Rock \u2019n\u2019 Roll recordings took place sporadically from 1973 to early 1975, with the album dropping in February of that year. From day one, the sessions were unruly. Lennon, newly split from his wife, Yoko Ono, was in the throes of his \u201cLost Weekend\u201d out in L.A., running wild with Harry Nilsson and the Hollywood Vampires. Spector was largely calling the shots, and allegedly fired a few \u2014 but more on that later.<\/p>\n Of all the bad habits on display, Spector, never shy on eccentricity, developed a new, soon-to-be infamous one: At the end of each night, he\u2019d slip out the door with the master tapes under his arm, like a villain in a heist movie.<\/p>\n It was somewhere in the midst of these sessions that Larry Carlton found himself called to A&M Studios for a week’s work on the album. Armed with his signature Gibson \u201969 ES-335<\/a> electric guitar<\/a>, the 26-year-old player was a major name in the session world, having cut tracks with the Partridge Family<\/a>, Linda Ronstadt, Vikki Carr, Tom Scott and Andy Williams, and even turning up on TV and film scores. He was also a key part of Quincy Jones<\/a>\u2019 massive orchestral pop and jazz productions of the era.<\/p>\n In short, if you needed a guitar part in L.A., you were probably calling Larry Carlton. His reputation was built on always delivering, sometimes on a literal moment\u2019s notice, and always with total professionalism. And that was what he expected in return, no matter the star power.<\/p>\n \n Larry Carlton with his guitar of choice, a Gibson ES-335, in the 1970s. (Image credit: Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n \u201cPhil Spector, the producer, had booked a lot of us musicians for seven o\u2019clock every night that week, five nights,\u201d Carlton remembers. The players arrived. Among them was piano great Leon Russell, who had performed at George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n But seven o\u2019clock came and went. Then eight. Nine-thirty arrived, but there was still no sign of Lennon or Spector.<\/p>\n \u201cLeon Russell and I went into another studio,\u201d Carlton recalls, \u201cand he sat at the piano, and we just kind of jammed a little bit.”<\/p>\n By the time Lennon and Spector arrived, around 10 o\u2019clock, the vibe had turned dark.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a bad time for John,\u201d Carlton explains, \u201cHe was drinking.\u201d<\/p>\n The song for this night’s session was “Bony Moronie,” a classic rock and roll hit written and recorded by Larry Williams in 1957.<\/p>\n So John\u2019s calling the chord changes \u2014 it\u2019s only three \u2014 and he\u2019s going, \u2018A, I got a gal named Bony Moronie. D.\u2019 I said, \u2018I got it.\u2019 It was a drag.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \u2014 Larry Carlton<\/p>\n \u201cNow, I played \u2018Bony Moronie\u2019 when I was 12 years old,\u201d Carlton recalls. \u201cSo I\u2019m in my cubby right here, and John\u2019s right here. And he had been drinking. So he\u2019s calling the chord changes \u2014 it\u2019s only three \u2014 and he\u2019s going, \u2018A, I got a gal named Bony Moronie. D.\u2019 I said, \u2018I got it.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a drag. It was. It was not professional and not what I expected.\u201d<\/p>\n When the session came to an end \u2014 seemingly not too long after it finally got underway \u2014 Carlton ended up driving Leon Russell back to his hotel.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018Man, that was a drag. Darn it,\u2019\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd with his Oklahoma accent, Leon just looked at me and goes, \u2018You kidding? I\u2019m back to Tulsa in the morning.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Larry Carlton: Playing in the Zone, Relearning Steely Dan, and the CHAOTIC John Lennon Session – YouTube Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n Carlton laughs about it now, but at the time it must have felt like a missed opportunity, and a difficult decision to make.<\/p>\n \u201cI got home and called Phil Spector\u2019s office and just left a message at midnight. I said, sorry, I can\u2019t make it the rest of the week. So I cancelled. That wasn\u2019t how I wanted to spend my time. It could have been so cool. But… one of those things, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n By late 1973, Spector had vanished completely, with the tapes in tow. Then, like some kind of Batman villain, he cold-called Lennon to announce, in a sly nod to the Watergate scandal, \u201cI\u2019ve got the John Dean tapes\u201d \u2014 and he wasn\u2019t giving them back without a deal.<\/p>\n As if that wasn\u2019t enough, in March \u201974 the producer was in a serious car crash that put him in a coma, freezing any hope of making progress on the album or retrieving the tapes. In the meantime, Lennon pivoted to working on a different project that became his 1974 album, Walls and Bridges.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re gonna shoot me, kill me, but don\u2019t mess with my ears, Phil.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \u2014 John Lennon<\/p>\n Meanwhile, record execs at Capitol were tasked with getting the tapes back, and after a drawn-out process, they reportedly shelled out around $90,000 to recover them from Spector.<\/p>\n In the end, nothing about the recording sessions appears to have gone smoothly. Spector was producing, which meant you could expect a wall of sound and some chaos \u2014 and that\u2019s exactly what happened. His behavior in the studio became so extreme that there are rumors of him firing a gun in the A&M control room in close proximity to Lennon\u2019s head. Lennon reportedly told him, \u201cIf you\u2019re gonna shoot me, kill me, but don\u2019t mess with my ears, Phil.\u201d<\/p>\n \n A billboard for Lennon’s Rock ‘n’ Roll album overlooks the Sunset Strip in April 1975 along with billboards for Michael Jackson’s Forever, Mac Davis’s Burnin’ Thing, and David Bowie’s Young Americans. (Image credit: Donaldson Collection\/Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n So who actually played guitar on the version of \u201cBony Moronie\u201d that appears on the finished album? For years, even reputable compendiums like The Beatles Bible<\/a> listed Larry Carlton as a guitarist on the Larry Williams cover. But as Carlton himself said in his new interview on the Thinking About Guitar<\/a> YouTube channel, he \u201cdidn\u2019t end up on the album.\u201d The finished version likely features Steve Cropper<\/a> and Jesse Ed Davis, considering their handling of the guitar duties in the sessions that followed, but the jury\u2019s still out.<\/p>\n Lennon would eventually finish the album in New York, producing the last sessions himself at Record Plant East. Rock \u2019n\u2019 Roll was released in February 1975 and stands today as a rowdy time capsule of the man\u2019s musical life at that stage. It would be Lennon\u2019s last true solo album before 1980\u2019s collaborative effort with Yoko Ono, Double Fantasy. Tragically, Lennon was shot and killed outside his and his wife\u2019s apartment at the Dakota, in New York City, just a few weeks after the latter\u2019s release.<\/p>\n Had he lived longer, it\u2019s easy to imagine Lennon and Mr. 335 might have crossed paths in a studio somewhere in the world, but in the end, it\u2019s another one of music\u2019s \u201cwhat could have been.\u201d Looking back, Carlton stands by his call. \u201cYeah, that wasn\u2019t fun. I\u2019m an admirer, but that was a bad time.\u201d<\/p>\n Bony Moronie (Remastered 2010) – YouTube![\"Drinking](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/G53MkoxvuevZVxzeGQwoum.jpg\")
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