A Boston photographer revisits an extraordinary afternoon in 1980.
Roger Farrington heard John Lennon before he ever laid eyes on him. He was sitting in an office at the Dakota in New York City on August 7, 1980, when a familiar voice came echoing down the stairwell. Lennon was singing as he made his way downstairs, warming up before heading to the Hit Factory for his first recording sessions in five years. Farrington had spent weeks preparing for the assignment. Now he was inside Lennon’s apartment building, listening to a voice he’d known for much of his life coming through the walls.
“It was absolutely magnificent. It was tingling,” Farrington recalled during a recent phone conversation with Ink on the Merrimack. “You know, you just realized, oh my gosh, this is real.”
Lennon eventually appeared wearing black from head to toe, with long hair falling beneath a wide-brimmed hat. He was tan from his recent time sailing in Bermuda, and Farrington remembered being struck by how healthy he looked. As Lennon approached, he extended his hand and introduced himself, apparently unaware of how unnecessary that introduction might be. “Hi, I’m John Lennon. Who are you?” Farrington explained that he was the photographer. Lennon had apparently mistaken him for one of the accountants. “I thought you were one of the accountants,” Farrington recalled Lennon saying.
Even now, Farrington laughs about being mistaken for an accountant. He wished he had come up with a quicker response, but Lennon had caught him off guard. Roger described a man who enjoyed busting balls, a personality trait a couple of guys from Boston can appreciate.
What impressed me was how easily Farrington returned to that morning. He’s answered questions about Lennon for decades, yet there was no sense that he was reciting a story he’d grown tired of telling. He was animated throughout the conversation, remembering even the movement of Lennon’s hair beneath his hat and the sound of his voice carrying through the Dakota’s stairwell. At points, listening to him describe the encounter, I felt like I could close my eyes and find myself standing in the room.
Neither man could have known what would happen four months later. That’s the difficulty with revisiting photographs taken during the final year of John Lennon’s life. We already know how the story ends, and that knowledge has a way of influencing how we see everything that came before it. Farrington, however, remembers Lennon as someone excited about making music again, with a record to begin and a studio full of musicians waiting for him.
A photographer from Boston
By the summer of 1980, Farrington had established himself around Boston’s entertainment scene. He’d spent years working at the Charles Playhouse, where photographing productions became an important part of his work. His images were appearing in local newspapers, and he’d begun branching into commercial assignments as the city’s restaurant and hospitality industries developed. He’d also photographed the Queen of Thailand’s visit to Boston. His independent business was taking shape.
Then Charles Cohen, a publicist he’d worked with at the Playhouse, called with a question. Had he ever heard of John Lennon and Yoko Ono? Farrington laughed while recalling how Cohen initially described the opportunity as a small assignment. The details that followed were anything but ordinary. Ono was preparing to announce that she and Lennon were returning to the recording studio, and she wanted to keep the New York media away from the project until they were ready.
Farrington was independent and based in Boston, which made him useful for an assignment requiring considerable discretion. He also developed his own film, something Ono specifically wanted because she didn’t want photographs of the sessions passing through a commercial laboratory.
“She didn’t want to hire a New York photographer. I was not to use a lab to develop the film. She asked if I developed my own film. Of course I did, and black and white, because the media was 99% black and white in 1980.”
He was told to remain available on short notice, potentially leaving for New York with only a day’s warning. He couldn’t discuss the assignment with anyone, and there was no guarantee it would happen at all. When he asked why Ono would go through such trouble to hire someone from Boston instead of choosing one of the many photographers in New York, the explanation came back to keeping everything under wraps. Then came a few requests that made Farrington wonder exactly what he’d gotten himself involved in.
Ono’s office sent Farrington family photographs to copy, a request that initially confused him. When the package arrived, he found images involving nudity, including the cover of the Two Virgins album. Concerned about reproducing them, he called to object but was told to proceed. He made the copies, returned the photographs and later came to believe the assignment had been a test of his discretion. Another call concerned his birthday. He then learned that Lennon and Ono consulted astrologers and considered the birthdays of people involved in the project. Farrington’s birthday fell close to Lennon’s, something he joked might have helped him land the job.
“I think I thought maybe it had something to do with the IRS,” he said. There was a good deal of laughter when we got into the astrology portion of the story. Farrington can appreciate how peculiar those arrangements sound today, though he was quick to explain that the assignment was serious business when it was happening. He didn’t know whether these requests were tests or simply part of how Ono operated. He was being offered an extraordinary opportunity, and he intended to do the job properly.
Leaving the Dakota
After the greetings at the Dakota, Farrington still had to get to the Hit Factory and make his photographs. Ono had already surprised him by asking whether he would stay overnight and return to the studio the next day. He told her he couldn’t: his instructions were to fly back to Boston and develop the film. As he recalled it, he’d just turned down an invitation he might never get again. That part of our conversation got a laugh out of me. I’d like to think I would have been as professional, but it’s hard to imagine turning down more time around John Lennon. Farrington knew what he had been hired to do. He followed Lennon and Ono outside, backing away as he photographed them leaving the building. There were a few people gathered near the entrance, which concerned him because he wasn’t sure whether the secrecy surrounding the session had already been compromised.
One of the people near the entrance was Paul Goresh, although Farrington had no idea who he was at the time. Goresh would later be associated with some of the most significant images taken outside the Dakota. That morning, he was photographing the photographer: Farrington backing away from Lennon and Ono with his camera raised.
Farrington wouldn’t discover the image until years later. “And only in the last 15 or so years did I track that down and get a copy of it,” he recalled.
There’s something remarkable about the circumstances of that photograph. Farrington had been hired to quietly document the couple’s return to recording, and another photographer managed to capture him in the act. The image eventually found its way into Farrington’s book, offering a glimpse of the assignment from an angle he couldn’t possibly have photographed himself.
Once Lennon and Ono departed, Farrington climbed into Lennon’s green Mercedes with his assistant, Fred, who was driving him to the studio. Lennon’s guitars were sitting in the back seat. It was another detail Farrington remembered vividly, finding himself traveling through Manhattan in the musician’s car with the instruments he would soon be playing. They got ahead of the limousine in Manhattan traffic, leaving him time to prepare for Lennon and Ono’s arrival.
The street outside the Hit Factory was hot, sunny and nearly empty. Farrington spotted the studio’s name across the awning and realized a photograph of the couple entering beneath it might tell the whole story. He positioned himself and got the shot, an image he would come to regard as one of the clearest records of the couple’s return to the studio for what became Double Fantasy.
He had no special credentials for a private Lennon session. He followed the couple toward the elevator and kept working. As they went upstairs, Lennon watched him adjust his aperture, shutter speed and flash for the darker studio. For a few moments, the job came down to ordinary photography problems. Farrington had to be ready when the elevator opened, no matter who was standing next to him.
Two people returning to work
One of the more interesting things about my conversation with Farrington was how differently he spoke about Yoko Ono than I’d expected. Ono has spent decades being portrayed as a difficult presence in Lennon’s life, particularly whenever the breakup of the Beatles comes up. I wasn’t necessarily expecting Farrington to repeat those familiar criticisms, but I was surprised by how much care he took in describing her role that day.
“It’s really important that Yoko was in charge of the whole thing,” Farrington said. “People don’t realize in 1980, they would have had lots of people on the staff doing these things, but Yoko was in charge of everything. John was just getting ready to record some music.”
Ono was trying to keep reporters and uninvited photographers from disrupting the musicians before they had settled in. Lennon, by Roger’s account, was already having a little fun. “I think John was having a little more fun. Yoko was more nervous and reserved,” Farrington recalled.
He had been hired to photograph them together, but Ono was managing the arrangements while Lennon wanted to play. Farrington sometimes reminded Lennon that he needed photographs of both of them. Lennon would call to her with a playful “Mommy, Mother, come here. We’re doing this together.” He recalled another little exchange as they left the Dakota: “When we were leaving the Dakota, she would walk ahead and he would pull her back and say, ‘No, let’s do this together.’”
Farrington remembered the gesture fondly, describing it as sweet. What stayed with me was how naturally he spoke about their relationship. He’d spent only a small amount of time in their company, but the affection he witnessed left an impression. Ono wasn’t simply managing Lennon’s career or directing the afternoon. In Farrington’s telling, she was working to make sure the return to the studio happened in an environment where they could both be comfortable.
At one point, he managed to ask Ono how the new record would be structured. She explained that they were still deciding whether to divide the album into separate sides or alternate their songs. They hadn’t even settled on the title Double Fantasy, and the project was still taking shape as Farrington moved around the studio with his camera. Ono had also asked Farrington not to strike up unnecessary conversations with Lennon. He understood the instruction, even if it was hard to follow while standing beside a Beatle.
Thirty-one photographs
The Hit Factory wasn’t set up for a formal photo session. People were still connecting equipment and moving microphone stands as Lennon reached for his guitar. Ono, meanwhile, was handling the business of getting the session started.
Before he settled in, Lennon entered the recording booth and put a photograph of his son Sean up on a monitor. Farrington remembered the gesture along with the musician’s eagerness to begin working. Lennon had been warming up his voice since leaving the Dakota, and now he was preparing his hands as well. “He was definitely warming up the whole time,” Farrington explained, recalling how fascinating that seemed in retrospect. “He was warming up when I met him at the Dakota. He was doing vocal exercises coming down the stairs.”
Roger remembered Lennon enjoying the echo of the Dakota’s back stairwell, letting his voice carry through the space as he warmed up. That same energy followed him into the studio. Once Lennon picked up his guitar, Farrington heard something he didn’t associate with the Beatles, even at their most experimental. “I did not recognize that there’s anything Beatles-esque even in their most experimental phases. It was a new sound and it was pretty incredible to hear and it was definitely at volume 11.”
Farrington later came to understand how important the collaborative side of Double Fantasy had been, particularly Lennon’s interest in Ono’s songs and the musicians’ work with both of them. That understanding developed over time. During the assignment itself, he was concentrating on the immediate challenge of photographing two people who weren’t always standing together. He needed their faces in the frame and the setting to be clear. Neither had come to the studio to pose.
“It was a very complicated situation. It was not really conducive to photography,” he explained. He also had a plane to catch. If word of the session leaked, he needed to be back in Boston with developed film and a photograph ready to release.
With one camera, Farrington tried to work without interrupting Lennon or wearing out his welcome by asking for poses. By the end, he had exposed just 31 frames, fewer than a full 36-exposure roll of black-and-white film.
I found that number especially interesting because I spend a fair amount of time photographing concerts myself. I can shoot 100 to 150 images during the first three songs of a band’s set, and I have the advantage of reviewing them immediately. If an exposure isn’t right, I make an adjustment and shoot again. Farrington had no such luxury. He wouldn’t know for certain what he’d captured until he returned to Boston and developed the film. The low number worried him.
“I felt like that was going to be the first thing that the press agent might say to me, you mean you didn’t even finish the roll?” he recalled. But the possibility of getting thrown out mattered more than filling a roll. Two cameras and a constant barrage of shutter clicks, he figured, might have made him unwelcome in a hurry.
“I wanted each shot to count,” he said. That meant watching his composition as carefully as he watched his timing. Newspapers could favor a vertical frame over a horizontal one, and an editor still needed room to crop.
After taking a vertical shot near the studio, Farrington asked for another, this time horizontal. Lennon had a line waiting for him: “What are we here to promote the Hit Factory?” It was the same humor Farrington had encountered at the Dakota. Lennon knew perfectly well why the photographer needed another picture, but he wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass.
Farrington left with his 31 pictures. He hadn’t photographed a full session or gathered the musicians for a group portrait. He’d documented the preparations, which was what the assignment allowed. Back in Boston, he developed the negatives. They were in focus and reasonably exposed, and he began to feel he had done his job.
The secrecy held, so the office didn’t need an immediate publicity photograph. Ono asked for prints of all 31 images, keeping him busy for much of the next day. The image of Lennon and Ono entering the Hit Factory was Farrington’s favorite for the assignment. It told the story without requiring much explanation. He had no idea how soon those photographs would take on another meaning.
The months that followed
On December 8, 1980, Farrington was watching Monday Night Football when Howard Cosell announced that John Lennon had been shot and killed outside the Dakota. He remembered hearing WBCN playing “Imagine” as the news spread. Television coverage soon seemed inescapable, and the possibility of working with Lennon again was gone.
“It was a terrible situation, and I couldn’t be more crushed,” Farrington recalled. During our conversation, the mood changed slightly when we reached this part of the story. Farrington had been laughing while discussing the unusual preparations and Lennon’s sense of humor, but his recollection of December 8 carried a different weight. It wasn’t that he struggled to speak about it. He’d simply had decades to consider what happened, and he seemed much more interested in remembering the man he’d met that summer than dwelling on the circumstances of his death.
The photographs soon became a source of dispute. Farrington said some had been distributed without permission, and he declined requests for additional images on the night Lennon died. “I said this is not something that I’m involved with.”
Farrington described an arrangement with United Press International that became contentious when the agency disputed his ownership of the photographs. He maintained that they belonged to him and said Ono recognized his ownership. The disagreement, along with the sudden demand for photographs associated with Lennon’s death, left him discouraged.
The Goresh connection came up again when Farrington described what followed Lennon’s death. Goresh, whom he had unknowingly encountered outside the Dakota, later photographed Lennon signing an album for Mark David Chapman shortly before Chapman murdered him. Roger heard from Goresh about the aftermath and how deeply it had affected him. Both photographers saw their work become attached to a tragedy neither could have anticipated.
Farrington had little interest in becoming part of the anniversary coverage that followed. Every few years, an editor might get in touch looking for photographs connected to Lennon’s death. He had taken the pictures to announce a recording project, and he didn’t want their entire purpose reduced to the tragedy that came afterward. “It’s wonderful now that we celebrate John’s birthday and not that horrible December 8th date,” he told me.
The photograph he nearly overlooked
For years, Farrington barely revisited the images. Then, at a New York exhibition in 2005, he noticed people gravitating toward a photograph he hadn’t paid particular attention to: Lennon smiling in the studio.
Farrington hadn’t initially regarded the image as especially important. His job had been to produce an effective publicity photograph, and he’d concentrated on pictures that clearly communicated Lennon and Ono’s return to recording. The smiling image didn’t necessarily accomplish that as directly, but visitors to the exhibition connected with it almost immediately. “That photo now is so important because it does show how really alive John was then and how eager and happy he was.”
Farrington explained that many New Yorkers had embraced Lennon as one of their own, and seeing him happy in the studio meant something to them. The photograph offered a glimpse of a musician enjoying himself, removed from the circumstances that would later dominate public memory.
As people continued examining the collection, other details emerged. Someone noticed the similar heart-shaped necklaces worn by Lennon and Ono. Musicians and collectors began identifying equipment in the studio, finding little pieces of information in photographs Farrington had taken decades earlier. One image showed Lennon in the recording booth with the equipment behind him. Farrington pointed out that viewers could see the actual tape in the machine and details of the recording setup. What had initially been a publicity photograph had become something music historians and collectors could study for information about the sessions themselves.
Farrington also included pictures he didn’t particularly like. One caught Lennon with his mouth open at an awkward angle, but he knew Lennon was warming up his voice. The moment mattered more than a flattering pose. His new book, Starting Over with John and Yoko: The Photographs, written with Beatles historian Kenneth Womack and published by Rutgers University Press, includes the complete collection of 31 photographs. It gives Farrington an opportunity to revisit the assignment with the benefit of everything he’s learned since and to share images that spent years outside public view.
The equipment, the couple’s interactions and Lennon’s preparations all reveal things Farrington couldn’t have anticipated while working against the clock. There’s an irony in that: he worried he hadn’t taken enough photographs, yet people are still finding new things in the 31 he brought home.
Remembering John Lennon
Toward the end of our conversation, I asked what he wished people understood about the Lennon he met that August day. Roger brought up the humor and the ease Lennon had with the people around him, but he kept returning to the musicians in the room. “He was in a really good place,” Farrington said.
Farrington believed having a band around him again gave Lennon something he’d missed. He also talked about the possibility of touring, something Lennon never got to pursue. “You have to recognize that John had a band and that was incredibly fulfilling for him,” he explained.
Roger saw the return to recording as meaningful to Lennon. He remembered him warming up seriously, then turning around and joking with the people beside him. Farrington wondered whether the Beatles might eventually have reunited. He knew it could never be answered, but he’d seen firsthand how much Lennon enjoyed making music with other people.
By the time our conversation was winding down, Farrington had spent nearly an hour walking me through a day that lasted only a small part of his long career. He’d answered questions he’d undoubtedly been asked many times before, yet he remained engaged throughout. There was plenty of laughter, and he was generous with details that helped me understand what the assignment had felt like rather than simply what had happened.
Before we hung up, he offered his number and told me to reach out if I needed anything else. I’ve conducted around 50 interviews since starting Ink on the Merrimack, and I can’t recall another person making that offer before I had a chance to ask. It’s a small gesture, but one that stayed with me. I’d gone into the conversation with considerable respect for Farrington’s work and left with an even greater appreciation for the person behind it.
There will always be interest in the historical significance of his photographs, particularly because they were taken during the final months of Lennon’s life. Farrington understands that better than most. He’s spent decades watching their meaning change, sometimes in ways that had very little to do with what he was originally hired to photograph.
But the image that eventually became so important to him wasn’t the one that best documented the couple entering the Hit Factory. It was a photograph he’d once given relatively little attention, showing Lennon smiling as he warmed up in the studio.
Farrington went to New York that day to photograph the beginning of something. The world would come to those images already knowing how soon it ended, but he remembers the hours before any of that happened. John Lennon was back in the studio, enjoying himself and getting ready to make music again. Forty-six years later, Roger Farrington would rather people remember that version of him.
Roger Farrington and Kenneth Womack will discuss and sign Starting Over with John and Yoko: The Photographs at the Boch Center’s Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame in Boston on October 28, 2026.
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