John Lennon

John Lennon, Beatle, ex-Beatle, icon. Make what you will of the Lennon legend... but it cannot be denied, the man had an enormous influence on the development of popular music. 

In a world where pop music has degenerated into mostly rhythmic, over-produced pap, Lennon's solo work may no longer seem relevant...but I that there is still much of value that can be found on these works. 

And for the disappointing downsides (and there are a few), there's always, that distinctive, crucified voice...

After the recording of The Beatle's White Album, John & Yoko embarked on an increasingly high profile publicity jaunt.

Their first release was Two Virgins, an experimental album that was, well, experimental, released in November 1968. In terms of the avant-garde movement, Two Virgins wasn't considered ground-breaking but it sure freaked out a lot of pop music fans.  

To me, it sounds like psychotic film soundtrack music (you know, when the hero's been drugged by the beautiful blonde and he's about to keel over.  Two Virgins is best remembered for its nude cover, which was covered up in the USA for public decency. 

John Lennon & Yoko Ono: Two Virgins

"...This record is a rock landmark. Not so much for whats on it but for the entire package. This package is so radical even by todays standards. Not many people have the luxury of being able to do whatever they want musically or artistically. John Lennon was able to do this. I think the cover is probably more important than the sound..." Amazon reviewer MarcS

"...Two Virgins was an experimental journey into an avant-garde world of psychedelic sounds, snippets, piano pecking and John's and Yoko's screams and howls..." Amazon reviewer Benjamin C. Leonard

"...Yoko carries on like a mental patient who wants her rattle and can't find it. John seems preoccupied with all of the gadgetry and noise you hear...when you are tripping your brains out. If this is avant-garde, then I'll have the pastrami on rye with mustard and, don't mind me, I'm going to turn the volume down a little..." Amazon reviewer Gustave O. Frey

However, in 1969 John & Yoko went global in a big way and Lennon seemed to put The Beatles very much on Lennon's backburner. In March John & Yoko got married and soon flew to Amsterdam, Vienna and then Toronto, Canada, announcing to the world press that they were staying in bed for a week for World Peace.

John & Yoko, Year Of Peace DVD

"...John & Yoko's Year Of Peace is a film that looks at the couple's peace activities with a strong emphasis on their time in Canada. Year of Peace first looks at the bed-ins. Those who've always wondered what they were about will finally get an explanation. Next, the audience sees the story behind Toronto's Rock 'N' Roll Revival Festival..." Amazon reviewer The Delite Rancher

"...At the very end of the film, someone asks Lennon if he thinks what he's doing can be effective...He says he doesn't know. He remarks that back at the Cavern if someone had asked him if he was going to make it, he wouldn't have known either...he only knew that the Beatles had something. Lennon's peace activities had something....It won't harm us at this time and in our current context to remember he did..." Amazon reviewer Tim Thomas

Lennon chronicled these Peace-nik activities for The Beatles in The Ballad Of John And Yoko* in April 1969 and just as quickly, come up with another new single, the still well-loved Give Peace A Chance, which was recorded on a second trip to Canada in June with journalists and assorted friends in attendance. 

This he released on his own, the first song released by a Beatle outside the group while it still existed but got round the "solo" question by releasing it, pointedly, as The Plastic Ono Band. 

Give Peace A Chance is a simple song and not particularly memorable at that but it served its purpose, because it's still used by peace-niks around the world. It was quickly Top 5 in the UK (which used the promotional film on Top Of The Pops if I remember correctly) and Top 20 in the USA where the promo film couldn't be used. However, since Lennon's death it has genuinely become the anthem that Lennon hoped it would.

From around that era, Lennon also gave an impromptu 5 minute interview to a 14 year old kid, Jerry Levitan. It has recently been developed into a fantastic piece of animation, called I Met The Walrus, which is really worth catching. 

In May Scene & Heard published an interview John & Yoko, who come across as space-cadets talking about Peace, God etc.  Later that month, they also released their second project, Life With Lions.

In September he offered The Beatles his stupendous Cold Turkey as a single, his experiences in self-curing a heroin addiction but it was understandably rejected (see below). In response he played a solo concert in Canada. There would be life for Lennon after The Beatles!  

LIVE Peace In Toronto   

LIVE Peace In Toronto was recorded with a makeshift band that included Eric Clapton & Klaus Voormann, which only "rehearsed" on the plane trip to Canada. The whole performance was captured on film and is now released as Sweet Toronto.

In October Lennon and the Plastic Ono band released the excellent and controvesial single Cold Turkey. With first Across The Universe, then Revolution & finally Cold Turkey rejected as singles, Lennon was feeling that his time as a Beatle had ended. However understandable The Beatles' decision was, Cold Turkey is still not just good, it's remarkable!

It'd full-throttle minimalist rock closer to punk rock than anything else with a restrained Eric Clapton on guitar, Hamburg-days friend and London session player Klaus Voorman on bass & Ringo on drums.

There's an extraordinary lyric and an even more powerful vocal with a fantastic freak-out ending as Lennon mimics the agony his body went through, in kicking heroin.

Say what you want to about Lennon but it cannot be taken away from him, the guy was brave, really brave. However, The Beatles were right, marketing-wise and Cold Turkey only became a Top 20 hit in the UK and just scraped the Top 30 in the USA.

Still, no major pop music figure has released a song like Cold Turkey, before or since!

"...Thirty-six hours
Rolling in pain
Praying to someone
Free me again

Oh I'll be a good boy
Please make me well
I promise you anything
Get me out of this hell

Cold turkey has got me
On the run..."

      Cold Turkey

In December  John & Yoko participated in the UNICEF charity concert at the London Lyceum ballroom with an expanded Plastic Ono band, including George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, The Who's Keith Moon, Delaney & Bonnie etc.  

They performed Cold Turkey and Yoko's Don't Worry Kyoko, which John & Yoko later released on the bonus disc of Some Time In New York City in 1972. It's essentially a big sloppy jam, but makes sense in a Sixties freak-out kinda way. You can see some of the LIVE concert footage at my blog.  

John and Yoko also participated in a BBC documentary, in which a team followed them around for five days. The results were broadcast just over a week later.

Soon after, the couple flew to Canada and John spent a couple of days individually signing 3,000 lithographs for their Bag One exhibition at the London Arts Gallery. When the lithographs returned to London and the exhibition formally opened, the lithographs were impounded the next day by Scotland Yard after complaints of obscenity. John & Yoko's personal assistant, Anthony Fawcett has the full story. 

In January 1970, John & Yoko also announced their enthusiastic involvement in a proposed Peace Festival:

"...We've come back to Canada to announce plans for a big Peace & Music festival to be held at Mosport Park near Toronto on July third, fourth and fifth, next year. We aim to make it the biggest music festival in history and we're going to be asking everybody who's anybody, to play..."

They zoomed off to a "retreat" in Denmark, (actually a meeting with Yoko's husband Tony Cox to try to get custody of Yoko's daughter, Kyoko), where Lennon cut his hair very short  and then rushed back to London to record and release the still-respected single, Instant Karma in February, 1970.

Instant Karma has a thumping, galloping drumbeat, neat lyrics and a great sing-a-long chorus. All in all, a great advertisement for the Lennons and Peace, of course! 

Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face
Better get yourself together darlin'
Join the human race

How in the world you gonna see?
Laughin' at fools like me
Who in the hell d'you think you are?
A super star?
Well, right you are!

        Instant Karma

By April 1970, John & Yoko announced that they had pulled out of the Peace & Music festival. However, that news was overshadowed by the release of McCartney, Paul McCartney's first solo album, which included McCartney's press release that The Beatles had broken up. Just a few days later, the Let It Be single, album & film was released.

Incidentally, the Denmark / Instant Karma / Peace Festival fiasco is reported very differently by Albert Goldman in The Lives Of John Lennon and makes really fascinating reading!

John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band   

In October, Lennon released his first proper solo album. It's a stunning, stark, angry, provocative, pop masterpiece and a fitting kamikaze attempt to end the Beatle legend.

Imagine   

Imagine was the well-loved and welcome follow-up to the harrowing John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band. Far less intimidatory than its predecessor, Imagine covers pretty similar ground. However, instead of looking in, or at least into, Plastic Ono Band's cracked mirror, Imagine looks out, even occasionally with humor and, as in the title track, into clouds of dippy non-materialism.

This review also looks at Gimme Some Truth, the pre-Reality TV DVD about the making of the Imagine album and another DVD, containing John & Yoko interviews from The Dick Cavett Show which they did to promote the Imagine album and Yoko's Art happening in New York.

Some Time In New York City  

One of Lennon's strengths had always been his inherent understanding of the strength of tabloid headlines for individual songs:

• Help
• Girl
• Revolution
• Because
• Cold Turkey
• Instant Karma

etc. When he attempted to go beyond that and create a tabloid album with Yoko of radical causes (mixing songs supporting the IRA with songs supporting strident Feminism is dangerous and juvenile).

Dumping his Beatle alumni and famous session friends, Lennon recorded Sometime In New York City with an unknown American band, Elephant's Memory and even played LIVE with them, in concert and on several TV shows. 

Unfortunately, the results were far less impressive than the well-received, million seller, Imagine.  

Mind Games    

With his tail between his legs, Lennon went quiet on radical causes but rebounded with Mind Games, which has some good tracks, some bad tracks and some middling tracks. Thirty years later, though, it's sounding much better than it did at the time.

Walls And Bridges    

Separated from Yoko Ono for 18 months Lennon, recorded two albums, first Rock'n'Roll, which was temporarily abandoned when a psychotic Phil Spector stole the tapes and then Walls And Bridges, in which:

• just about everything was looking and sounding great
• the album package was impressive
• there was a #1 single

...except...   

Rock'n'Roll    

When Lennon got the tapes to Rock'n'Roll back from Spector, he headed straight back into the studio and completed the project with a small band of session players. The results were released quickly, in mid-1975 and were lots of fun...but certainly didn't sell as well as Lennon had hoped.  

18" John Lennon doll

Greatest Hits  

Reconciliation with Yoko brought almost complete writer's block (N.B.: In The Lives Of John Lennon Albert Goldman claims that it was mostly a 4-year heroin haze) though an excellent Greatest Hits collection was released as Shaved Fish. 

 John Lennon: Shaved Fish

There have been several other collections since Lennon's death which contain most of the Shaved Fish tracks and add others from his come-back albums, Double Fantasy & Milk And Honey.

 The John Lennon Collection

Double Fantasy    

In late 1980, almost 6 years after Wall & Bridges, Lennon released his first self-penned songs on Double Fantasy, a co-effort with Yoko. Hugely hyped, it was only a minor success at first, with the retro first single Just Like Starting Over hardly exciting anyone except for Beatle-fans...but much bigger things were expected of the second single planned for release, Woman.

In December Lennon was murdered by a crazy fan, one Mark Chapman, who, it's believed was tossing up between eliminating:

• Lennon
• Todd Rundgren or
• David Bowie (a program to The Elephant Man , the play that Bowie was then successfully starring in on Broadway was found in Chapman's belongings, indicating he had probably gone to the show. Bowie never acted in public again.) 

and sales of Double Fantasy went through the roof!

Posthumous Releases

Following his death, Lennon's peers, could not help but express their feelings, with songs by:

• George Harrison
• Paul McCartney
• Elton John &
• Roxy Music

The Lennon estate has also subsequently released:

• Milk & Honey (a planned follow-up to Double Fantasy)
• the 4-CD, Lennon Anthology
• the Anthology reduction Onsaponatime &
• Acoustic, Lennon's home demos + some LIVE tracks 

John Lennon Books & DVDs

A selection of books & DVDs by or about Lennon.

see also:

• wikipedia John Lennon
• tributes for John Lennon, 1940-1980

*John & Yoko also added some curios to The British Issue of Multimedia Arts Magazine (see #8, #9 & #11)