Yoko's 'Thin Ice' beautifully revisited

In the video Yoko Ono walks through the rainy streets of New York in 1981

"And when our hearts return to ashes, it'll be just a story ...."

So sings Yoko Ono in Walking on Thin Ice, an extraordinary song that continues to works its magic in new ways some 36 years after it was recorded.

The latest orchestral remix by New York-based DJ Danny Tenaglia lays the song bare in a beautiful manner.

An accompanying short video using footage from 1981 further highlights the evocative nature of the track, and captures the absence in Ono's life following to death of her husband John Lennon a few months earlier.

The video of Ono walking alone through a grey, rainy day in New York City in 1981, shows a virtually deserted and unglamourous looking Times Square followed by contemplative images of Ono back at her apartment in The Dakota building, and sitting on a bench in Central Park where she and Lennon once took walks together.

Brooklyn-born Tenaglia has remixed this song before, taking it to the No.1 spot on the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart in 2003 and 2013. However, there is nothing dance-clubby about Walking on Thin Ice (Maestro Version) 2016. Instead, Tenaglia has delivered a hauntingly beautiful orchestral-led version that perfectly complements Ono's poignant lyrics.

In a previous blog I wrote about how this was the track Ono and Lennon were working on at the Record Plant recording studio on December 8, 1980. Lennon had said to Ono he was certain she had just recorded her first number one hit.

Walking on Thin Ice twice reached the Top 40 in the UK official record charts. The original recording did so in 1981, and Tenaglia's first remix matched that achievement in 2003.

Over the years there have been numerous re-recordings of the song by a variety of artists, together with remixes of the original track by a host of producers and DJs, including Tenaglia's two dance playlist topping versions. However, this 2016 mix adds a new dimension to enhance the track's timelessness.


Walking on Thin Ice (Maestro Version) 2016 appears on Ono's new album Yes, I'm a Witch Too.