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. 

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.

Yoko Ono tops the US dance chart

Yoko Ono at 80 scored a number one hit on the US Dance Chart with 'Hold Me' - a new song written in collaboration with producer Dave Aude.

Yoko's energy is impressive and life-affirming. This song also shows that she continues to treasure her love for John Lennon.

When I first heard this track I was stunned by its vibrancy, but also by the words and the touching message they convey, all the more poignant for anyone who knows the John and Yoko backstory. In the video there is the image of the word 'yes', although it is not part of the lyric. The 'yes' is surely a nod in the direction of the first meeting between Yoko and Lennon at a London art gallery when Lennon climbed a stepladder to look through a magnifying glass at a word written on the ceiling which said 'yes'. The piece of installation art was Yoko's, and the fact that it was a 'positive' message pleased Lennon and led to the couple connecting and living their lives together.

Lennon believed that Yoko's musical output was ahead of its time. In 1980, when he heard The B52's 'Rock Lobster' playing inside a Bermuda nightclub he was struck by the similarities it had to Yoko's earlier recordings. He called her in New York to tell her the world had caught up and was ready for her music.

Well, it may have taken a further 30 years, but there is no doubt that Yoko's music is gaining the popular acclaim that Lennon foresaw. In the past five years a total of 10 Yoko tracks have hit the top of the US Dance Chart. They were reworked/mixed versions of older songs recorded by Yoko, until this year's 'Hold Me' which was specifically written as a dance track.

The thumping dance beat treatment blends well with Yoko's stark vocal delivery. At 80, Yoko recently said in an interview that she feels she is starting a new life. If she continues producing songs like this (and check out her involvement in son Sean's recent 'Don't Frack Me' environmental protest track), then long may this new musical lease of life continue.