John Lennon on Recording "Across the Universe" and "Fame" with David Bowie

"Bowie was around, and he was doing 'Across the Universe.' That was an old song of mine. I gave it away because we had made a lousy version of it, and then Spector made an improved lousy version of it and it ended up on the Let It Be LP, which none of us would have anything to do with . . . Bowie said, 'Come down.' I had sort of met him once in LA and met him again here. He's fiddling around, he writes them in the studio. He goes in with about four words and a few guys and starts laying down all this stuff and he has virtually nothing. He's making it up in the studio. The guitarist, or he, had this sort of a lick, and we made a song out of it called 'Fame.' So I just contributed whatever I contributed, which is like backwards piano and 'Ooh,' and a couple of things, a repeat of 'Fame' and then we needed a middle eight. So we took some of Stevie Wonder's middle eight and did it backwards. It's an interesting track."