Earl Slick, the artist too drunk to jam with John Lennon: “I was so hungover”

For any self-respecting musician, the chance to record alongside John Lennon is the thing of fantasy. After all, the former Beatle is among the most important, successful, and universally beloved figures to ever grace the airwaves, penning a litany of music’s most iconic tracks alongside The Beatles and crafting a truly compelling solo career in subsequent years.

Now that Lennon has long since passed, the idea of somebody squandering the chance to perform with the songwriter feels all the more sacrilegious, and it is something that is still the cause of deep regret for Earl Slick.

Emerging onto the music scene of New York City during the 1970s, Slick quickly established himself as a talented and in-demand guitarist, regularly lending his talents to session work, in addition to performing alongside various bands. As the years progressed, his six-stringed talents landed Slick on the radar of performers as iconic as David Bowie. Initially, Slick was recruited as a replacement for Mick Ronson (which should, in itself, give you an indication of his incredible skills) and earned himself a spot on the Diamond Dogs tour back in 1974, going on to aid in the recording of Young Americans and Station to Station, too.

Although Slick parted ways with the Bowie camp prior to the Station to Station tour, owing to a conflict with the artist’s management, the guitarist had a fair few other offers, including the chance to work with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. His work with the duo largely centred around the recording of Double Fantasy, the final album recorded by Lennon and Ono during the lifetime of the iconic songwriter. However, Slick didn’t take full advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

After all, Slick was a gigging session musician at the time, unable to attach too much importance to one project or another. At the same time, the guitarist was deeply immersed in all the excesses of a rock and roll lifestyle, which makes things like deadlines, obligations, and time constraints seem less than important. Rock stars are not, ultimately, the most punctual demographic in the world.

During one particularly exuberant period of rock and roll excess, Slick rendered himself unable to fulfil any work commitments, including those he made to John Lennon. “Here’s something that I’m not proud of,” he later recalled, “I was so fucking hungover and sick that day that I didn’t show up at the studio.”

That particular day, at the Hit Factory studio in New York in August 1980, Lennon was focused on recording his heartfelt ode to Yoko Ono, ‘Dear Yoko’. In the end, the songwriter recorded the track in only six takes, but Earl Slick didn’t feature on the recording, despite being cited in the album’s liner notes. “I called, but I didn’t play on it,” he admitted.

“I was so fucked up that I couldn’t get to the studio,” Slick explained. Seemingly, ‘Dear Yoko’ wasn’t the only instance of Slick taking things a little too far, and that lifestyle was impacting his work in the studio. “This is part of who I was at the time,” he said. The session guitarist did note, however, that missing out on the studio recording was a rare occurrence. “That was one of the very few times in all the years, even when I was out of control, that I ever did something like that, and of course, I did it on a Lennon record.”

Less than four months after Slick missed out on the ‘Dear Yoko’ session, John Lennon was shot dead outside his apartment building in New York City, bringing an end to the life of one of the most impactful songwriters in musical history. Inevitably, the songwriter’s tragic end only compounded Slick’s guilt over missing the recording session in August, even if he did perform on a multitude of other Lennon tracks during that era.