“What was that riff you had?” Bowie asks his longtime guitarist Carlos Alomar, whose motto is “I play any guitar that pays.” John listens to Alomar’s guitar work, then finds his way in, repeating the word aim, which Bowie then morphs into fame, the song’s driving theme, lyric, and title.

“He goes in with about four words and a few guys,” John says, “and starts laying down this stuff, and he has virtually nothing—he’s just making it up in the studio. So I just contributed whatever I contributed—you know, like, backwards piano and oooohhh [hits a high note] and a couple of things like the repeat of ‘fame.’”

The structure of the session may have been Bowie’s, but the pacing is all John’s. “God, that session was fast,” Bowie marvels. “That was an evening’s work!”

He calls his producer in London, saying, “Er, Tony. I don’t know how to tell you this, but John and I wrote a song together and we recorded and mixed it. It’s called ‘Fame.’”

On July 25, RCA Records issues “Fame,” with Bowie and John credited as coauthors. When on September 20, 1975, the song becomes Bowie’s first number-one hit in America, he insists, “I wouldn’t know how to pick a single if it hit me in the face.”

“And we made a record out of it, right?” John says. “So he got his first number one so I felt that was like a karmic thing, you know. With me and Elton, I got my first number one so I passed it on to Bowie and he got his.”

And even better: “I like that track.”

*  *  *

These collaborations are revitalizing for John. So although the ink is barely dry on the severed Beatles relationship, when Paul suggests that John come down to record with him in New Orleans on his new Wings album, John very seriously considers it—talking it over with May, Art Garfunkel, and even the Beatles’ old press officer Derek Taylor.

Had he gone to New Orleans, an entirely unknown future could have been explored. But instead, he’s enticed into a very different collaboration, one he cannot turn away from.

Chapter 51

Chapter 51

Shake it up, baby, now…

—“Twist and Shout”

John’s newest collaboration is of a more personal nature. Yoko is pregnant.

Given her advanced maternal age of forty-two and her history of miscarriages, John takes tender care of her fragile health and that of her unborn child. “When I got pregnant I had to concentrate on being pregnant for a whole nine months,” Yoko says. She’s on bed rest most of the time, which prevents her from working, so “John got a wheelchair and he would push me around into the kitchen where there would be lunch,” she recalls. “Isn’t that sweet?”