John Lennon
“Songwriting is a limiting experience in some ways - writing down words that have to rhyme.” – John Lennon
“He is a god of music. He just has horrible taste in women.” – Al
“AAAAAIIIIIEEEEOOOOOAYAYAYAYAYAOOOYYOYOOOOAAAAIAIREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!” – Yoko Ono
Albums Reviewed:
Sometime In New York City/Live Jam
John is the
first of the Beatles whose solo career I’m reviewing mainly because he’s the
only one whose catalog I have. I have
The main issue when dealing with John’s solo material is, ofcourse, Yoko Ono. There are a grand total of four albums in circulation consisting entirely of John-penned solo material, and one of them isn’t any good! So what you have to do is get Plastic Ono Band and Imagine right now, pick up Mind Games a little later, and then get ready to hate Yoko with a passion. Its her absence from John’s life that makes his ’74-’75 material uninspiring, and it’s her presence in John’s life that makes listening to what’s left occasionally unbearable. Keep the skip button handy for his post-hibernation period, and keep your lighter fluid handy for anything where John and Yoko actually collaborate. She is utterly unable to write a song, at all. Her voice is unbearable. Her avant-garde vocal “stylings” have driven many men to suicide. Simply put, everything she touches turns to shit. It would have been so much better for her to marry Bob Seger.
And, onto the reviews!
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “I Found
Out”
This album has been getting 10’s and A+’s and 45-minute, ultra-intense sessions of oral sex from every web reviewer on the planet for so long that every time I listen to it, I keep waiting for that one listen where I have an epiphany and realize that I too should give it the highest rating possible on my scale. But, see, I’ve listened to this record about fifteen times by this point, and that moment simply hasn’t happened yet. Is it a fantastic album? Ofcourse it is. Is it John Lennon’s best? Definitely. Is it the best solo Beatles album? That I can’t say, since I don’t have Band on the Run and I haven’t listened to All Things Must Pass in about two years, but it’s definitely right up around the top. However, I seem to be in the minority of people who actually find flaws in its seemingly impenetrable armor. Small, nitpicky ones, perhaps, but flaws nonetheless, and enough of them to not grant the album the 10 I always feel I should be giving it simply because a handful of John’s lyrics are among the most spot-on, mean, cutting things I’ve ever heard (something about which no one in their right mind would argue).
Most people already know the circumstances surrounding this record, but for those who don’t, allow me to humor myself. After leaving the Beatles, Johnny Boy underwent Dr. Arthur Janov’s “Primal Scream Therapy,” which may or may not involve yelling really loud at a wall for no reason, to deal with all the repressed pain in his life over his dead mother, his sense of isolation, and whatever the fuck else he felt like whining about at that particular time, and it was during this time that he sat down and recorded John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. The lyrics are completely without simile or metaphor and the music is just as bare. Ringo plays very spare yet spot-on drums, Klaus Voorman pitches in with simple, effective bass lines, and John either plays a solitary piano, pretty acoustic guitar (in which case the song in question will have no rhythm section whatsoever), or mean, stingy electric guitar. And only one at a time, too. No overdubs of one on top of another, and definitely no strings. But don’t get the impression that this record sounds like it was produced in the back alley behind a Fatburger chain on La Brea (the impression I had before listening to it for the first time, mainly from reading other reviews of it that use basically the same language I just did). Despite the skeletal instrumentation, Phil “Murderer” Spector was still on hand to produce and make sure it sounded like very thoughtfully constructed minimalism. This is also clearly a case of the artist making the creative decisions and the producer just doing what he was told, because this album is just about the polar opposite of Phil’s famous “Wall of Sound” bullshit that quite often annoys the crap out of me. So thank you, Phil, for letting John do his thing and just making sure it was engineered decently.
Most of the songs here are definitely of the highest order, too, although they are often lacking in pop-friendly verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-chorus radio structure and occasionally in the melody department as well. My favorite is actually “I Found Out,” an absolutely scathing attack on the hippie movement set to one of the meanest, most hypnotic, most deliberately under-produced electric guitar lines I’ve ever heard. Despite not being very loud, this tune is fucking mean, and it’s the fuzz on the guitar and John’s totally on-target put-downs like “don’t give me that brother brother brother brother…” that do it. “Mother” details his sorrow over losing his mother and having his father walk out on him in such a starkly emotional fashion you almost feel uncomfortable listening to it, and his yelps at the end give you a peek at what “Primal Scream Therapy” might have been about. The quiet “Working Class Hero” is a totally unwarranted attack on the entire middle class (“Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV, and you think you're so clever and classless and free, but you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see”) that’s so spot-on I don’t seem to mind the fact that he’s completely belittling the life of just about every person I’ve ever met in only three minutes. The quiet piano ballads “Isolation” and “Love” are affecting as well, and “Love” especially is lyrical bombshell (“love is needing to be loved,” etc.). Then ofcourse there’s the closer “God,” which starts with the line “God is a concept by which we measure our pain,” followed by John’s saying “I’ll say it again!” and then repeating that one little line that tears apart the entire concept of organized religion in about five seconds. And everyone knows that climactic “I don’t believe in the Beatles!” line that, coming in 1970, probably made the entire world do one of those comedy spit-takes. See, this is why there will never be another band bigger than the Beatles. There is no other band in the history of pop music about whom that line would carry as much weight. If U2 broke up and Bono penned the line “I don’t believe in U2,” would people care? Sure, ofcourse they would. But they wouldn’t care on the same level. The Beatles as a cultural phenomenon will never happen again. Period.
At this point, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t give this record a 10 like everyone else. Well, the answer to that lies in the remaining songs on the album. With such an obsessively minimalist purpose and recording style, it’s impossible to cover up 2nd-rate songs with great sound and production. The givers of 10’s and A+’s are won over by the incredibly biting and cutting sincerity of the whole affair here, and I’m damn close to being won over too, but a handful of songs here just don’t do it for me at all. I like both “Hold On” and “Look at Me,” but I feel nothing more for them than general “like” (they’re kinda boring), and, to different degrees, I actively dislike both “Remember” and “Well Well Well.” “Remember” is built around one uninteresting, shuffly piano line and very little melodic tastiness by way of John’s vocals. I’ve simply never been able to feel anything but boredom at this song, cool ending or not, and I’ve never been able to feel anything but annoyance at the majority of “Well Well Well.” The basic premise of the tune, musically, seems to be to take the “Primal Scream” parts of “Mother” and cross them with the under-produced, mean, stinging guitar sound of “I Found Out,” and while I find the song interesting for a short period of time, at six minutes, the sounds of John drunkenly slapping at his guitar strings and yelling tunelessly while Ringo plays the simplest drum figure he could think of is simply not something I enjoy hearing. Maybe I just don’t have the gumption for it, I dunno. If not for it, I’d probably cave and give the album a 10 along with everyone else, but it’s such a gaping hole I can’t do it.
This is probably one of the highest 9’s I’ve ever given out. If I was down with decimals, I’d give it a 9.5 without even thinking, but there’s just not quite enough in the way of musical goodies on here for me to slap the 10 on. I actually don’t even think it’s the best place to start with John. Imagine, despite being slightly weaker overall, is much more listener-friendly and an ideal place to dive into John’s thematically interesting but (at least post-1971) musically unsatisfying solo career. Still, for fans of starkly emotional music who don’t have the weakness for ear candy that affects yours truly, this is truly one of the best bets in music. Despite being so quiet, it hits hard, and its best moments rank among the most genuinely affecting music ever recorded. But I’m not giving it a 10. Mi dispiace.
Imagine (1971)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Imagine”
Straight 9 all the way through this time instead of a 9/10 waffling party followed by my putting my foot down because “Well Well Well” annoys me just that much, Imagine shows Vladimir Ilitch “John” Lennon continuing to explore themes similar to those on Plastic (Yoko) Ono (Sucks) Band, but with better-than-bare-bones production (still no-frills in general, but there are overdubs and strings and the songs are generally fleshed out instead of left half-done in a bin), a lot less biting sarcasm (although the one time it comes up it’s truly vicious) and tinges of optimism peeking out through the introspective gloom. We see this optimism most famously in the deservedly beloved, utopian title track (the favorite John song of nearly everyone on the planet, including yours truly), but even more obviously in the cute, sprightly love-note closer “Oh Yoko,” which is so lightweight it almost feels like the entire song is floating on air. But it’s so catchy and so clearly sincere in its expression of love that, despite my personal dislike for Yoko Ono herself (which only exists because of her absolutely horrible musical “talents”…for all I know she’s a saint of a person), it gets me every time. That harmonica solo at the end compares favorably to the one in Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” in my book, you know. It’s just that it’s a little shorter.
Outside of those two moments of light, however (and, when you think about it, how much “light” does the title track even show? John’s hypothetical utopia is so completely unworkable (I mean, “no possessions?” Alright, comrade…) you wonder if the song is almost borderline sarcastic itself. It’s obvious that 99.9% of people who love this song would never actually buy in to what it’s actually preaching, in any case), we’ve got more introspective singer-songwriting from John, albeit in much less blatant terms and with a little more protest writing tossed in, specifically the six-minute uglyfest “I Don’t Want to Be a Soldier” and the tossed-off piece of mediocrity “Gimme Some Truth,” by far the two weakest tunes on the record and an altogether alarming preview of what John would do next. Do we really need five sax solos overdubbing each other in “I Don’t Want to Be a Soldier,” for instance? No, we don’t. One is plenty! One is good! I dig the sax in “It’s So Hard,” for instance, a slow-as-molasses, dirty, nasty boogie with no clear analogue anywhere in Plastic Ono Band bar possibly the guitar sound partially taken from “I Found Out,” except, you know, produced. The mild boogie piano overdubs and sarcastic string arrangements flesh out the tune nicely as well. And yes, I do mean “sarcastic” string arrangements. The string lines are written and played in such a way as to give the song a biting, sarcastic overtone when lyrically it may not have one.
Such string arrangements are also employed (more appropriately) in “How Do You Sleep?”, John’s big middle finger to Paul and one of the most unjustly mean and derogatory songs I’ve ever heard. Apparently, as if saying “I don’t believe in the Beatles” on his last album wasn’t enough, John felt he had to rip apart Paul’s character and musical ability (partly from jealousy, since Paul was always a better pure pop songwriter than John) to make sure everyone was perfectly clear that the Beatles weren’t getting back together anytime soon. The song is damn good, actually. Great boogie keyboard parts and guitar lines. It sounds just as subtly damning musically as it does lyrically, and that’s quite a feat by John. But lyrically it’s just inappropriate. “Those freaks was right when they said you was dead.” “The only thing you done was yesterday.” “A pretty face may last a year or two, but pretty soon they’ll see what you can do. The sound you make is muzak to my ears.” Etc. With the deaths of John and George and his subsequent ability to do whatever the fuck he wants with the Beatles, including his changing the crediting of his Beatles songs from “Lennon/McCartney” to “McCartney/Lennon” and his release of that Let it Be…Naked thing, Paul has proven to be a littke petty, yes. But that doesn’t mean that listening to this song doesn’t make me feel dirty.
Thankfully, none of the remaining tunes make me feel anything but “hey, good song!” The hokey and super-fun “Crippled Inside” follows the title track in sequence, and I actually like it almost as much as quite possibly the most universally beloved song of all time (even though nobody else even seems to mention it). The guitar intro is gorgeous, and then it turns into a nearly-perfect country/slide-guitar/rollicking bar piano piece of genius that rivals even the best Beatles songs for melodic and musical tastiness. And for what it’s dealing with thematically, how you can “shine your shoes and wear a suit” and do X and Y and Z to make yourself look happy, but “the one thing you can’t hide is when you’re crippled inside,” it is perfect musically, since the song is contagiously upbeat and happy, like writing a song with that type of musical background can’t hide his inner problems either, so he has to let them come out in his lyrics. Great stuff. And although nothing else here can match it and the title track for yumminess, “Jealous Guy” is one of the most gorgeous ballads John ever turned out and both “Oh My Love” and “How?” are pretty, if unspectacular, as well. The former sounds closest to Plastic Ono Band in its minimal production (like “Love” or “Look at Me,” perhaps, but even this song has both a piano and slight guitar in it, therefore beating anything on Plastic Ono Band in terms of production detail), and “How?” contains some gloppy string usage that reminds me why I don’t really like the original, Let it Be version of “The Long and Winding Road,” although not nearly as egregious as the Spector rape in that one, and the song is very nice and melodic nonetheless. But the fact remains that it’s the one point on the record where I always think to myself “what the…oh, right, Spector is producing.” I generally don’t like thinking that.
So, except for two generally unattractive protest songs stuck right next to each other in the middle and a teensy bit of Spectorized gloppiness, this is one damn strong record. After beginning with possibly the two best songs John ever wrote in his solo career, it obviously can’t keep to that standard, but there’s still something here for everyone, from lovely ballads to cute hoedowns to lightweight love notes to sarcastic rockers to slow, raunchy boogies. Like I said in the last review, it’s probably the best bet as a starting point for John as well, though I bet most people end up liking Plastic Ono Band more (as they SHOULD). The remainder of John’s solo career never came close to meeting the high standards of his first two records, and what happened immediately next is one of the most unconscionably poor mid-career missteps I can think of a major artist ever taking, but at lease John left us with two excellent albums first.
Sometime In New York City/Live Jam (1972)
Rating: 2
Best Song: “
I didn’t think it was possible for something released by John Fucking Lennon of all people just two years after the breakup of the Beatles to possibly be as bad as this was made out to be. But I was wrong, and lord knows it’s probably even worse than that. As far I can tell, there are two principal problems with this album (besides the obvious fact that the songs blow dong): First, John decided to ditch all that lovely introspective songwriting doohickey that had netted him two excellent albums and instead got super-duper-mega political, which would be fine if every song here weren’t about obscure Irish people I’ve never heard of that date this album to a clearly defined 6-month period in 1972 and if he didn’t sound like such a pretentious jackass throughout the entire record. Second, Yoko makes her first appearance since all that experimental crap John and his pug-fugly Japanese fuck buddy released before Plastic Ono Band came out, and she is out in full force, singing solo just as much as John does and joining John for duets a handful of times as well. But most of the time she just yodels like a cancer patient with an opossum scratching at her larynx. Because she’s Yoko Ono and that’s what she does.
As you can probably tell by the title, this puppy is actually a double album, split between a bad studio half (Sometime in New York City) and an even worse live half (Live Jam). Both are terrible, and from here on out I shall discuss them separately:
Sometime in
Oh, did I mention Yoko sings a lot? Well, she does! And let me say right out that one of the two or three best songs on the entire record is actually one of her songs, and yes, you read that right. “Sisters, O Sisters” is a total bubblegum 50’s Motown song that I’d probably eat right up if someone besides Yoko Ono and THE WORST SINGING VOICE I HAVE EVER HEARD were providing vocals. I said in the intro that everything Yoko touches turns to shit, and I mean it. This is actually a nice song, but nothing in which Yoko Ono sings anything has any possibility of being good at all. It simply will not happen. Preachy, pompous, thick-accented Japanese women should not be singing rock and roll songs. Ever. For the rest of Yoko’s solo contributions, “Born in a Prison” blows ass, and I can’t even physically get through the entirety of the closer “We’re All Water,” most of which consists of an overly repetitive and annoying boogie-rock background, over which Yoko YODELS for what seems like hours (OK, not literal yodeling, but if you’ve heard just one of her patented “AAAIIIIEEEE!!!!” vocal excursions, you know what I’m talking about, and I call it “yodeling” because I have nothing else to call it). Needless to say, it’s absolutely unlistenable. She also pops in to duet with John on the half-decent yet annoying because, oh, I dunno, Yoko is singing, boogie “Attica State” (you know, I could describe every song here as “annoying boogie,” couldn’t I?). She also sings along with John on the honky, overweening ballad “Angela” and trades off annoying political laments with John on the horrendous “The Luck of the Irish.” Thankfully, she limits her contribution on “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (no, not the U2 song…about 100 times worse) to ruining the choruses, leaving John to actually provide some pretty funky and interesting verses and one of the few times I can honestly feel like I’m enjoying myself with this thing.
By my
count, there are only three songs on
the studio disc where Yoko shuts the hell up, “Woman is the Nigger of the
World,” “
Live Jam: Amazingly, the live half of this thing makes Sometime in New York City sound like Imagine in comparison. I will be brief. I have only been able to get through this thing in full once without hitting the “skip” button, and that one time damn near put me off listening to music for the rest of my life. One song, “Don’t Worry, Kyoko,” consists of Yoko yodeling tunelessly over a musical backing that sounds like the aural equivalent of puke for sixteen minutes. The last five minutes of the record are Yoko yodeling over nothing but FEEDBACK NOISE. The only song where Yoko shuts up and (not coincidentally) the only one I don’t skip through after 30 seconds is a nine minute crap rendition of “Cold Turkey,” a song I hate with a passion in all of its versions, this one most of all. Yoko has a written part in none of the remaining three tracks, but since she’s an idiot she decides to make squeaking noises in the background anyway for the entire duration of all of them. In one of them, the remaining vocals consist of John yelling the word “scumbag!” 600 times, and in another the remaining vocals consist of nothing. Frank Zappa is heavily involved for some reason, and the combination of his band with John and Yoko is the worst, most horribly produced, most under-rehearsed live recording I’ve ever had the misfortune of listening to. My friend Joe and I bashing through mediocre nineties rock songs in his basement sounds about 100 times better than what the band is playing here. They are sloppy, powerless, and horrid. Needless to say, I give this half of the album a 1, and then I burn it.
Look at the ratings for John Lennon’s first four records: 9, 9, 2, 8. How the fuck does a 2 get stuck in there? How do you follow up Imagine with this shit? If you can think of a bigger misstep from an artist who wasn’t already clearly on the downside of his/her career, please let me know. Either way, I’m just gonna blame Yoko. She’s ugly.
Mind Games (1973)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Mind
Games”
Underrated and consistently strong rebound album from John after the complete disaster of Sometime in Bullshit City with too much Yoko/Live Bullshit with too much Yoko and Frank Zappa (by the way, I like Frank Zappa, especially Hot Rats and its brilliant fusion tastiness, so no undue flames, per favore). The public are generally a giant pile of morons (witness their mixed reaction to Plastic Ono Band), but give them credit for the fact that they wanted no part of the pile of dung John and Yoko pooped out in 1972, so this is probably the safest and most purposely commercial album John ever made. But it’s good! Bar the slow and uneventful “One Day (at a Time),” there’s nothing I dislike here. It’s blatantly commercial pop music, yes, but it was all written by one half of the greatest pop songwriting duo of all time, so what’s the problem?
OK, so we’re now three years out from the breakup of the Beatles, and although it seems John’s lost the ability to produce truly timeless music and has instead settled for making “very good” music, this is actually quite fine by me coming after that last thing his name was on. Only the opening title track, a grandly sweeping ballad with a beautiful melody, really qualifies as an all-time classic Lennon song. It sounds remarkably similar to “Imagine,” actually, something that’s probably not a coincidence. The second track (“Tight A$”) is a countrified good-time hoedown track that sounds not a little like “Crippled Inside,” and the third track (“Aisumasen (I’m Sorry)”) is a big, slow, epic ballad that sounds a fuckload like “Jealous Guy.” So, after completely embarrassing himself, John makes the first three tracks of his next album easily identifiable, slightly weaker analogues to the first three tracks on Imagine, by far his biggest-selling solo record to that point. Just like anyone trying to sell records would do. But hell, the songs are all very strong, so what the fuck? I got no problems.
Like I
said, “One Day (at a Time)” is boring nothing slop with a saxophone and
annoying backing “oooo” vocals from someone who sounds suspiciously like Yoko, but that’s the only misstep here. After “Bring on the Lucie (Freda People),”
which could fit onto All Things Must Pass
in a heartbeat if it had vocals about Hari Krishna and George was singing them,
you’ve basically got a whole slew of heavily produced (but heavily produced well) mid-tempo rockers and ballads that
all sound very good to my ears, even if they do sound remarkably similar.
The best of them is the lovely “Out of the Blue,” possibly my
second-favorite tune here (well, either that or “Tight A$”). “Intuition” is bouncy with funky keyboards,
and I could use the exact same description for “Only People.” I dig them both, though. “I Know (I Know)” sounds disturbingly similar
to “Out of the Blue,” but how can you dislike that “todaaaaaaaaaayyyy…I love
you mooooore than yesterdaaaaaaaay!” melody line? I sure can’t.
“You are Here” isn’t the most eventful ballad I’ve ever heard, and
John’s produced more convincing rockers than the closer “
Nothing here will shatter the earth, but it’s such an overwhelmingly pleasant, lovely, nice album that, unless you have some kind of preconceived notion that John Lennon records should be life-changing experiences and have songs like “God” or “Imagine” on them, I bet you’ll like it just fine, even if a lot of it admittedly sounds the same. Definitely your best Lennon bet after the first two. Just a well-produced, well-written, well-constructed mainstream seventies pop album. Nothing more, nothing less.
Walls And Bridges (1974)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “What You
Got”
Showing that liberal atheist over-sarcastic pigfuckers are always right while Mormons are always wrong, I nearly completely agree with Capn Marvel’s mediocre B- rating for this one (hell, I like it less than that), while the 9 than John McFerrin has slapped on it over at his site confuzzles me to no end. Maybe he likes boring, messy mediocrity. Is that it? I dunno. Because this album, to me, is not worthy of receiving any theoretically positive rating, let alone a highly-recommendable one like a 9. 5 all the way, baby! Wanky, overproduced, middling boring pseudo-boogie rock/soul bullshit music rules the day!
A little background: this is the one and only John Lennon solo album of original material recorded at a time when John was not together with Yoko Ono. Yes, John slapped together this one during his year and a half separation from Yoko called the “lost weekend” (which I am legally bound to put in quotation marks), during which he moved to L.A. and snorted coke with Elton John and Mick Jagger all day (editor’s note: coke may or may not have been involved; the author has no clue and simply enjoys using the phrase “snort coke” in his reviews). Good material for a VH1 Behind the Music special, maybe, but not a good state in which to make a record album. So I guess it’s not surprising the thing turns out badly. Unless he’s working together with Yoko (in which case they produce hideous, unlistenable crap), it seems like it’s better for him, musically, to be healthy and fat and happy and living devotedly with his unattractive little bony Japanese conceptual artist ladyfriend. His first two album are fantastic, Mind Games is really fucking good, and the songs he wrote around 1980 more or less rule ass as well (sure, the albums are hit-or-miss because Yoko wrote half the goddamn material and all, but it’s not like she had any input over what John’s songs sounded like). Without Yoko, his personal life turned into a messy, confusing drug and alcohol binge. With Elton John. So, knowing that, I guess we should expect a messy, annoying, confusing, unfocused record.
However,
just because I know where John’s coming from doesn’t mean I have to like the
album. It’s very similar to Mind Games in its commercial pop
tendencies and Spector-ized production, but whereas the songs were strong and
focused before, here they’re usually either boring or annoying, and sometimes
both. Nothing here is really atrocious, but I can’t say I like much
of it at all. The only song I like without
any qualifications actually gets slagged on by people who like this record a lot more than me, and that’s “What You
Got.” Sure, the stabbing guitars and
horns and “funky” horn parts in the chorus may annoy some, but I for one am
thankful for a song that actually has some true drive and emotion. Lyrically, it’s almost a narrative of what
probably went on every week during that fucked-up time in
You can keep the rest, though, however not-really-that-bad all of it is. The hit (John’s only #1 hit, too…somehow) was “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night,” a duet with Elton John that sounds more like an Elton John song than a John Lennon song, boogie rock piano and honky sax solos and everything. Totally decadent Elton mid-seventies soul-ish piano pop/rock, you know? I suppose it’s catchy, but it’s also annoying and has no real power whatsoever. The opener “Going Down on Love” isn’t too bad either, and I like the opening part with just guitar and bongos before the horns and sluggish drum figure come in and make the song just bore the living crap out of me. Is it supposed to be a rocker or a ballad? I’ve got no fucking idea! It just sits there and does nothing! Blah!
There are a
large number of ballads on this
album, and while they’re all professionally composed and produced, I am, again,
simply left bored by them. “Old Dirt Road” is in that #3 slot in an
attempt to be an analogue to “Jealous Guy” and “Aisumasen (I’m Sorry),” but
it’s all fake gloppy strings and piano and it’s simply not very good. The hit ballad here was “#9 Dream,” and it’s
probably the best of the bunch (I dig the nonsense lyric parts), but playing it
back to back with just about any other
ballad on this entire album will yield almost no difference in sound, feel,
or production. Lots of gloppy strings
and fake emotion and very little in the way of focused, compact music. I know “Bless You” is a ballad also, but I
can’t tell you a thing about it. I don’t
really care. I almost half-like “Nobody
Loves You (When You’re Down and Out),” if only for it’s beginning (just an
acoustic guitar! Truly mournful
vocals! No fake
While “What You Got” is good and “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night” is objectively catchy despite being annoying as fuck, the remaining rockers are just bad news. Even on the good songs, this album has too many fucking saxes and horns, and they make “Surprise Surprise (Sweet Bird of Paradox),” which would’ve been a decent song with just a guitar/bass/drums/piano instrumentation, not do anything exciting at all. “Steel and Glass” is absolutely horrendous, all shitty horn lines and those “sarcastic” strings that made “It’s so Hard” and “How Do You Sleep?” so cool on Imagine, but since they’re used completely without restraint here, they just suck total balls. “Beef Jerky” is an instrumental rocker with 8,000 horns blasting away that serves no purpose other than to blow, and “Ya Ya” is a one-minute un-produced outtake with either a mental defective or a little kid on drums that sounds better than half of the finished material here because it doesn’t have any annoying horn blasts or gloppy string shit overdubs on it. And now I have named every song on the album.
If you’re barely paying attention, Mind Games and this record actually don’t sound all that different from each other. But, dammit, there are obvious, glaring differences between the two. Focus vs. confusion; compactness vs. messiness; lovely, appropriate production vs. overproduced, horn-heavy, fake gloppiness. I know I give Yoko a hard time, but if John is gonna write crap like this when they’re separated, maybe it’s a good idea for her to stick around. Just lock her out of the studio when John’s trying to record something.
Matt Voelker (kasmirr144@yahoo.com) writes:
John's first son Julian is
actually the "mental defective or a little kid on drums" in
Ya-Ya...(i learned that from the god-send known as
the AMG!)... not like that makes it any better or anything.
this album blows and it blows it mighty hard. it's a bigggg let
down after the orgasmically tasty mind games, but its still better than the
wonderfully vomit-inducing death sentence of Sometime in NYC. although when
they start chanting "beef jerky" in the middle of the song of the
same name, a little part of me dies. thank you john lennon.
Rock ‘n’ Roll (1975)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Peggy
Sue”
Ever wondered what ‘50’s early rock and roll would sound like if Phil Spector produced all of it? Well, for just $19.95 at your local Tower Records, now you can find out! Or be like me and download it off the internet for free and probably go to jail for it sometime in 2006 when the record companies get hip to BitTorrent. Although I guess I technically got this album from a friend of mine (Al!), and he downloaded it for free off the internet. Or maybe he ripped it onto his computer after “borrowing” it from his local library, which I think, legally, is pretty kosher, right? Whatever. Both of us are going to jail in the next year and a half anyway. Do you have any idea how many records I’ve downloaded off BitTorrent in the last few months? I’ll never be able to listen to them all. I am SO gonna get sued…
But putting that aside, what we have here is a pleasantly entertaining throwaway John probably made in a day of a bunch of Spectorized covers of old ‘50’s songs John’s known by heart since they were originally released and he hadn’t even formed the Quarrymen yet. Supposedly the thing sprung out of a flap over John’s stealing a Chuck Berry lyric for “Come Together” (the “here come old flat-top” one), but the fact that John was still piss drunk all the goddamn time surely had a lot to do with the ramshackle nature of the finished product, too. As far as I can tell, John probably provided all the vocal tracks and maybe some of the guitar/piano tracks and then just left the rest to Spector, who does a surprisingly nice, understated job with the thing (relatively…I mean, it’s Spector, so there are still atmospheric bongos and 80 unnecessary horns in everything, but it sounds enough like ‘50’s rock to be fine with me). Ofcourse, by this point John’s personal production style sounded so much like Spector’s I’ve got no idea if this is correct, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. I’d heard many of these songs before ever popping this thing in, too, either in the original (“Peggy Sue”), other cover versions (“You Can’t Catch Me”), or both (“Stand by Me”), but the ones I hadn’t heard more or less sound like everything else, so you’re in for nothing new or unexpected here, that’s for sure.
Hell, though, it’s pretty fun, I guess. The songs don’t have the sweaty greasy rawness of their originals or cover versions from bands like the Rolling Stones in the early-mid sixties, but everything here is nice nonetheless. “Peggy Sue”’s rollicking drum parts and kick-ass guitar solo are emulated brilliantly, so that’s the biggest winner here. I find it odd how Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me” sounds more like “Going Down on Love” from Walls and Bridges than anything actually by Chuck Berry, but whatever. It’s fine. “Stand By Me” will always be a gorgeous, wonderful song, no matter who’s playing it (unless maybe Fred Durst is involved). “Be-Bop-a-Lula” is a hoot. The medleys are great fun. “Sweet Little Sixteen” shows why Chuck Berry was really a pervert at heart. “Ya Ya” is nice to hear in a fully fleshed-out version instead of the demo tacked onto Walls and Bridges for reasons unbeknownst to me. “Bony Maronie” annoys me, but that’s probably because the title sounds too much like “Beefaroni.” Take out the horns and you’ll see lots of good rollicking fifties piano parts, and John’s been singing these things for, hell, twenty years by this point, so his voice sounds great with the material. You’ve all heard “Twist and Shout,” right? His voice sounds remarkably similar to when he recorded that. Very little degeneration there, if any. This album has about as much artistic worth as a thumbtack, and John probably spent more time wishing he were still boning Yoko than recording “Bony Maronie,” but whatever. It’s fun yet completely forgettable. Just like John intended it to be.
Double Fantasy (1980)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Watching
The Wheels”
Dual-credited to both John and Yoko, and therein, obviously, lies the problem. After recording Rock ‘n’ Roll (but before it was released…I think…) John finally reunited with Yoko, stopped being coked up with Elton John, moved back to New York, retired from recording music, and decided to be a boring old house-husband for a while and raise his son Sean (who today looks like a truly disturbing Asian version of John), in part because he completely neglected his first son with his first wife before he met his annoying little Japanese bridge troll. When he a-got the a-hankerin’ to make music again, what was good about this is that, after half a decade out of the game, his creative juices had gotten flowing again, so the songs he produces here are almost of all very good quality. What was bad about the whole project is what you see on the cover. Not just John. John and Yoko. So unless you like overly-quirky, cliché-filled, awfully-written pseudo-new wave bullshit sung by a squeaky-voiced Asian woman with a heavy accent, I can safely say you’re only gonna like half this record.
I probably wouldn’t dwell on the Yokoness of this whole thing if it had been sequenced differently. For instance, how about a John side and a Yoko side? Then you can just play half the album and turn it off! But nooooooo. They had to ALTERNATE. So the whole thing goes John-Yoko-John-Yoko-John-Yoko etc. and is one of the most annoying things in the history of the world to listen to. From a purely mathematical standpoint, I’d give the Lennon half somewhere in the high 8/low 9 range and the Yoko half a 1 (which is fucking generous, if you ask me). But the John songs register in your head much more clearly than the Yokosongs, and if you’re like me you’ll find yourself simply blocking out the Yokosongs at some point like they don’t exist. Once I’m done with this page, I’m taking all the Lennon tracks from this one and Milk and Honey and putting them in one mp3 playlist, therefore doing what John should have done himself back when he made this thing, ofcourse, but I guess you gotta accept the whole John package. Like if you have a great yet occasionally annoying friend with a girlfriend who seems nice and is definitely good for him, but you hate her with a passion for the simple reason that she annoys the crap out of you. That’s Yoko. She’s the nice yet hideously annoying girlfriend. Just pretend she’s not there when you’re hanging out.
I’m not gonna mention the Yokosongs anymore. Suffice to say they’re all horrible. Yoko has a voice about 100 times worse than Geddy Fucking Lee’s, which is big news coming from someone who intentionally inserts a Geddy Lee reference into every new artist page he creates just mock the poor guy. But you know what? Fuck her, because the John songs are excellent. Not on the level of Plastic Ono Band or Imagine, but this aura of contented domestic bliss has led John to write happy, middle-aged man happy songs of such melodic qualities and production expertise (some people complain here and say it sounds “plastic.” I say that’s just because half it sounds like Yoko. I like the production fine) that I’d probably rate a short little record of only John songs above Mind Games, and I really like that album. Again, it’s just pure pop music, but the production is more streamlined and no longer Spectorized with piles of horns and strings. The opener “(Just Like) Starting Over” swings along in its flawlessly produced doo-wop tastiness, “Cleanup Time” may have a lot of horns, but it’s poppy and it’s bouncy and it’s melodic and it’s fun! These are clearly the songs of a happy man. Even the topically not-so-happy “I’m Losing You” ends up being a feel-good time because of the way it sounds. The light, wistful “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” and the bouncy, cute “Dear Yoko” perfectly express the feelings John probably had every day around this point for his son and his wife, respectively. “Woman” is the most ballad-like tune here, and though it’s not that great and its chorus backing vocals grate on me a bit, but I certainly can’t say it’s any weaker than the random side 2 ballads on Mind Games. More happiness there, too. He sure loves his woman, I guess! I’ll never know why, ofcourse, but good for him. “Watching the Wheels” is the only song here that comes to Beatles or 1970-71-level John, and it is tanfastic! Wonderful piano, soaring chorus. Just a lovely tune in all respects. If the messiness of Walls and Bridges wasn’t enough for you, this record should prove once and for all that happy, contented John = good John, at least when it comes to songwriting (tossing out Sometime in NYC/Live Wank as too Yokofied to really count).
The only Lennon track that annoys me is “Help me to Help Myself,” if only because it sounds like a demo tape that John slapped on the end and forgot to produce. It’s grainy and it sounds like shit, but maybe it’d be better if it got all done up like “Watching the Wheels.” I don’t know. The rest of the Lennon tunes are just lovely, though. It’s a shame you have to sit through all the Yokocrap, or skip through it or edit your playlist to get rid of it or at least be forced to do something to it. It obviously hurts the rating a lot. That 7 up there is purely noncommittal, halfway between what I’d give the Lennon material and what the true mathematical average of the John and Yoko stuff would be. But since you’re most likely not a web reviewer who feels obligated to listen to the Yokocrap as part of the package, I will say to you that the Lennon material packaged by itself would be John’s 3rd-best record, after his first two. The “skip” button’s entire reason to exist is this record. Use it wisely.
Milk And Honey (1984)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Nobody
Told Me”
An archive release and basically the same damn thing as Double Fantasy. You dug the Lennon tunes on that one? Great! You’ll love these too, since they’re from the exact same sessions, just a little rougher around the edges because that psycho shot John before he had to chance to fully “polish” them. You hated the Yokotunes on the last record? OK! You’ll hate these, too. Oh, I suppose they’re a little less annoying than the Double Fantasy material (I hate “Sleepless Night” with only 95% of the fibers of my being, for instance, and “O’ Sanity” is barely over a minute long, which is always nice for a Yokosong), so much so that I’d give the Yoko half here…a slightly higher 1! Like a 1.5! Ha! Yes. It’s probably just because I’m used to her bullshit now, though. Like I’ve become desensitized to it. And does anyone else find it incredibly douchey of her to toss her songs on this thing, and even splice them between the John songs like on Double Fantasy? John’s not ALIVE anymore! This was completely her decision, and it’s not like anyone would buy her goddamn songs if they weren’t attached to John’s at the hip. Unless John’s around to OK the idea and actually give it some kind of authority, doesn’t anyone else think she should just let her bullshit sit in the vaults? This bothers me.
OK, so this album’s a lot shorter than Double Fantasy, so we have both less Yoko (good) and less John (bad). Plus, of the six John songs, two aren’t even that good. “(Forgive Me) My Little Flower Princess” is an annoying, overly light pseudo-Caribbean type of jive that I can’t endorse very strongly, and “Grow Old With Me” has quite possibly the worst production of any song I’ve ever heard in my life not by Hüsker Dü, despite being pretty well-written. Sure, they’re both miles ahead of any of the Yokoshit on the album, but they’re both…average, which is not what I or you have come to expect from John, unless ofcourse we’re dealing with Walls and Bridges.
So half the album is Yokocrap and two of the John songs are just average…why, then, have I given this record a 7? Because the last four John songs are awesome. They even rock pretty well, which is something you can’t say about much of anything on Double Fantasy. They’re also just as happy and bouncy and contented as the numbers from that one, and both “I’m Stepping Out” and “I Don’t Wanna Face it” provide more tuneage equal to best kind of bouncy, happy pop music you’ll find on the last album, only maybe a little bit more energetic because of the slight lack of production “sheen.” A rollicking good time, they are. “Nobody Told Me” is the one you’ve probably heard, and it’s awesome. Definitely my favorite tune on either of these records, it rocks pretty damn hard, and I love that “nobodytoldmetheredbedayslikethese!” chorus. Very unique, inventive, interesting, and catchy. That’s pretty tough to pull off, y’know? Finally, “Borrowed Time” is light as a feather half-reggae that’s so wonderfully happy and catchy and lovely it’s impossible to dislike unless you have a preference for, you know, shitty music. Love that airy piano fill thing in the chorus, there. Fantastic.
So, again, you’re basically getting the same thing as Double Fantasy here. The Yoko is less prevalent and slightly less intolerable, but still horrid. The John is also less prevalent and now more inconsistent as well, but the best moments surpass the best moments on Double Fantasy. Putting that all together, it seems fair to give it the same record as its predecessor, no? I think so. And now I never have to listen to a Yokosong again. Huzzah! Because let me say it one more time: Asian women with accents should not sing rock and roll, ever. I even have a story to back this up. Before my friend and I went into NYC to see Interpol a few months ago, we looked up the opening act on Musicmatch Jukebox (one “Blonde Redhead”), and we both thought the first 10 seconds of the first song we heard was decent. I then looked at the band picture, saw an Asian woman, and said “wait, I bet that Asian chick is the singer, in which case I bet she sounds like Yoko Ono.” Sure enough, a Yoko Ono soundalike started blathering about nothing within five seconds of my saying that, enabling us to time our trip to the concert so as to arrive post-opening act and pre-Interpol (who ruled, although Paul Banks needs to learn how to move). Asian-accented women have the worst possible voices for rock and roll. I mean, have you heard what traditional Chinese and Japanese music sounds like? Picture that exact same voice singing a boogie-rock song with saxophones. See? Bullshit.
Acoustic (2004)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Watching
The Wheels”
An interesting-in-theory but ultimately useless compilation I only have because the mythical Al sent it to me over IM a few months ago, Acoustic is exactly what it sounds like: all your favorite John Lennon tunes (and a fair number of your least-favorite ones) played by John on an acoustic guitar with no other instrumental accompaniment. Maybe this would be cool if John hadn’t died in 1980, therefore making this the likely result of an inevitable MTV Unplugged cash-in show somewhere around 1995, but alas it is not. What it is is a bunch of poorly-produced acoustic demos and an occasional live track or two, half of which were already on the giant Anthology box set I don’t have and don’t plan on having.
What makes it a fine listen is that a full third of it comes from Plastic Ono Band material (some of which, like “Working Class Hero,” doesn’t sound all that different from the final album version) and that a bunch more of it comes from John’s demos for Double Fantasy, including downright gorgeous run-throughs of “Watching the Wheels” and “Dear Yoko.” What makes it annoying is that another full third comes from material around the time of Sometime in NYC, and “Cold Turkey,” “The Luck of the Irish,” “John Sinclair,” and “Woman is the Nigger of the World” are no less annoying here in shoddily produced, fuzz-covered demos and/or live takes than they were before. The only song from in between these two periods is, for some reason, “What You Got,” and it’s exactly what you’d expect a tossed-off acoustic demo of that song to sound like. “Imagine” is here, too, but it’s a live version and not so hot.
I don’t know where any of these versions come from, except that the ones with crowd noise are probably a live take. Why some of the Plastic Ono Band material sounds good (“Look at Me”) and some sounds horrifically unproduced (“God”) is a total mystery to me. The superb demo versions of “Watching the Wheels” and “Dear Yoko” are the only reasons to get this, and for all I know those could be on Anthology as well. I simply have no idea. I’m giving it a 6 based solely on the enjoyment factor, since, except for the still disastrous Sometime in NYC material, the songs here are uniformly superb, and anything with nearly half of Plastic Ono Band on it in some decent-sounding form must be rated higher than Walls and Bridges, just on principle. It’s just about worthless, though, so don’t spend money on it.