Yoko Ono's 'Walking On Thin Ice' tops dance chart

"I think you just cut your first number one, Yoko," John Lennon remarked at the end of a recording of Yoko Ono's 'Walking On Thin Ice.'

Thirty-three years later a remix of the song has just topped the US Billboard hot dance song chart - giving Ono her 11th number one in that particular hit parade in recent years. A different remix of the song, also by New York-based DJ Danny Tenaglia, topped the dance chart in 2003.

The original recording was the last Lennon ever worked on. The night he was shot in December 1980 he and Ono had been in the studio putting the finishing touches to the track. Lennon added lead guitar to the track that evening.

While the current remix by Tenaglia has brought fresh prominence to the song - and introduced it to a new dance/club audience - a look back at the original shows what a striking track it was, and how Lennon and Ono were switching up creative gears.

A haunting quality permeates the song. The lyrics deal with life, death, and fate - and the edginess of the backing track accentuates the deep mood. As well as Lennon, some of the finest studio musicians of the time played on the track, including Hugh McCracken, Tony Levin, Earl Slick and Bermuda's Andy Newmark.

Ono directed a simple video (see above) for the song when it was released in early 1981. It includes home video of herself and Lennon relaxing by the waterside at their Long Island holiday home in early 1980. It was there, in Cold Harbor, that Lennon learned to sail shortly before venturing out on a 650-mile ocean crossing to Bermuda where he worked on, and refined, what became his final songs during a two-month vacation that summer.

The contemplative video also shows Ono wandering alone in New York and sitting on a bench in Central Park, which she and Lennon regularly visited. Ghostly, rapid-cut repeat image of mountains and an inland lake linger in the mind's eye long after the video ends.

Ono's track has stood the test of time. More than three decades after it was made, the original sounds fresh and contemporaneous. As a dance track, Tenaglia's club mix is good and has brought the track to the attention of a new audience. But the true beauty of 'Walking On Thin Ice' is found in the stark moodiness and majesty of the original.