New App to Highlight Recordings of John Lennon at Sea

Tyler Coneys Tyler Coneys, left, was a member of the crew on the Megan Jaye, the 43-foot sloop on which John Lennon sailed to Bermuda in 1980.

John Lennon’s June 1980 visit to Bermuda, where he composed some of the songs that became “Double Fantasy,” his final album, will be the subject of “John Lennon: The Bermuda Tapes,” an iPad and iPhone app scheduled to be released on Nov. 5. The app will include some the rough composing recordings that Lennon made during the trip, as well as visual materials that include his handwritten lyric sheets and photographs taken during the trip.

The app, which is directed by the filmmaker Michael Epstein and the digital artist Mark Thompson, will include two activity streams.

The first, called “Play,” lets the user follow Lennon’s trip, which began on June 6, 1980 in Newport, R.I., when he sailed to Bermuda on the 43-foot sloop Megan Jaye with his son Sean, then four years old, and a crew of three. During the trip, the crew encountered heavy weather, and Lennon said in interviews that for part of the journey, he sailed the boat on his own, singing sea-shanties all the way. Audio clips of Lennon and members of the crew describing the trip are included. The app also includes glimpses of places Lennon visited during his stay in Bermuda.

The more promising section of the app, called “Listen,” includes Lennon’s recordings of the songs he composed in Bermuda. During the trip, Lennon played these recordings over the phone to Yoko Ono, who had remained in New York. She composed responses, and played them to Lennon. Those songs became the basis of “Double Fantasy,” which the couple described as “a heart play,” as well as a proposed follow-up, which Ms. Ono completed after Lennon’s death, “Milk and Honey.”

Lennon’s demo recordings are not entirely unknown. Ms. Ono has released a few on posthumous compilations like the “John Lennon Anthology” and “Acoustic,” and dozens of them were played on a 219-episode radio series, “The Lost Lennon Tapes,” which was broadcast weekly for several years, starting in 1988. But Lennon recorded many versions of his songs-in-progress, and “The Bermuda Tapes” will include versions in which several takes are edited together to show how the songs - among them, “Woman,” “(Just Like) Starting Over,” “I’m Losing You,” “Nobody Told Me” and “Dear Yoko” - changed and developd as Lennon tweaked them.

The producers say that all proceeds from the app will go to WhyHunger, a charitable organization started by the singer Harry Chapin in 1975.