(The Praeger Singer-Songwriter Collection) Ben Urish, Ken Bielen-The Words and Music of John Lennon-Praeger (2007) (11 page)

the joyful hippie ambiance of the album make it difficult to judge how seri-

ous the cover’s proclamation of “The Rock Liberation Front” (RLF) and its

call for subversive action against media sellouts really is, although previous

works of the RLF indicate it was serious indeed. Lennon had engaged in press

releases and open letters that espoused the radical cause of the RLF with harsh

solemnity.12

One song of particular interest is “The Ballad of New York City (John

Lennon–Yoko Ono).” It is a rollicking performance that also begins with a

segment from an interview with Lennon and Ono and lyrically states why

Lennon and Ono have found the perfect home in New York, with Lennon

providing a dobro accompaniment on the cut. They must have agreed with

Peel’s sentiments, and the song makes an interesting companion piece to the

contemporaneous
Elephant’s Memory
’s “Local Plastic Ono Band” as well as

Lennon’s “New York City.”

Its recording time is not clear, but an unreleased nine-and-a-half-minute

opus titled “America,” featuring vocals by Peel and Ono, may date from this

period—however, some of Ono’s vocals may have been mixed in from her

previous recordings. Since Peel guests on a vocal of the Elephant’s Memory

album Lennon and Ono produced later in the year, it may have been recorded

then, or perhaps when Ono was recording her solo album
Approximately

Infinite Universe.
Like those albums, the track is reputedly produced by Len-

non and Ono and may have Lennon playing or singing on it, although, if so,

he is not readily evident. It is a captivating fusing of Ono’s vocal pyrotechnics

with Peel’s chant-like intoning of the title and a litany of locations, events,

and attitudes dealing with the United States. They are backed by a hypnotic

pulsing rhythm with flute and voices provided by what might be Elephant’s

Memory, alone or augmented, and finishing with what sounds like tribal

bongos with a drill sergeant leading a platoon through a call and response

Gimme Some Truth, 1970–1973 37

on a double-time march. As one of the more successful of such recordings, it

ought to be legally released.

sometime in new York citY

Released in June 1972, nine months after the commercial and artistic suc-

cess of
Imagine, Sometime in New York City
became Lennon’s most lam-

basted and least successful album. It is the most sustained version of Lennon’s

drive to create musical news reports and commentaries in quickly released

songs, a drive that began in earnest with The Beatles’ “Revolution,” the flip

side of “Hey Jude,” and continued through his early solo work culminating

here in this album-length effort. As such, it has the strengths and weak-

nesses expected of a more-or-less spur-of-the-moment opinion-editorial. At

the time of its release, many reviewers disliked it for its lack of subtlety as

much as for its opinions. As might be expected, more recently it has taken on

the sheen of a time capsule of the period and, to a limited degree, has been

somewhat redeemed as a result.

The album cover is a mock-up of the front page of the
New York Times,

with the song lyrics listed as if they are the news articles. As originally

released, a second disc comprised two live appearances. One performance

was as the Plastic Ono Supergroup in 1969 to support UNICEF; the other

was as the Plastic Ono Mothers and was a 1971 appearance with Frank

Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. Zappa did not release his mastered

and edited version of the show until over a decade after Lennon’s shooting,

calling the CD
Playground Psychotics.

Ono had moved into combining her experimental compositions with more

conventional pop-oriented songwriting, and, even though the couple duet

and support each other on the various tracks and even share songwriting

credit on most of the cuts, the album somewhat alternates between songs

that feature Lennon and songs that feature Ono. This foreshadows the more

intensified application of this approach eight years later for the
Double Fan-

tasy
album and its posthumously completed and released companion album

Milk and Honey.

Another change from their previous work is that on the
Sometime in

New York City
album the Plastic Ono Band is now formed around a rough

and ready bar band called Elephant’s Memory. The group had enjoyed

moderate success for almost four years by the time Lennon and Ono began

working with them. Fueled perhaps by the desire for a “real band” in the

wake of their acoustic appearances in Detroit and Harlem in December

the previous year, Lennon and Ono would work with Elephant’s Memory

as their backing band throughout 1972, including the recorded concert

performances released in 1986 as the
Live in New York City
album and

video.

38 The Words and Music of John Lennon

The release of the
Sometime in New York City
album had been preceded by

the Lennon / Ono single “Woman Is the Nigger of the World” / “Sisters, O

Sisters” the previous April. Both songs are on the album, and “Woman Is the

Nigger of the World” is the first cut. The song is an accusatory feminist plea,

employing racial metaphor to highlight the severity of the social injustice to

which women are subjected. Lennon had previously employed a shocking

metaphor for a song title with “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” from The Beatles’

White Album. In keeping with Lennon’s artistic aim of the directness and

immediacy of a news report, the ironic humor of the earlier song is absent

here. The recording contains one of Lennon’s most subtly nuanced vocal

performances and intriguing productions and is one of his most unjustly

overlooked recording efforts.

If a bit radical for the time, the feminist message may have been relatively

palatable. But the use of the epithet “nigger” in the title all but ensured that

the song would receive limited airplay. In fact, AM radio banned the song

for its potentially inflammatory use of the term. The song did garner some

limited FM airplay, albeit usually late at night on college and underground

radio stations.

Certainly Lennon had been in the United States long enough to know

how incendiary the term was and could have predicted the response. So the

fact that he released the song as a single nonetheless shows his commitment

to the ideas expressed in the song, even at the risk of damaging his career.

Before Lennon performed it on television’s
The Dick Cavett Show
in May,

Cavett was forced by the ABC network to warn the public in advance, even

after Lennon had explained the song’s meaning and intent. Lennon’s stance

and metaphoric use of the word “nigger” was understood and supported by

the leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, as well as by
Ebony
magazine.13

Having stood his ground, Lennon had to be content with the single reaching

only number 57 on the charts.

The catalyst for the song was an interview comment made by Ono in

1969 that became the title.14 She receives co-credit for the work, although

that seems to be her only contribution. Part of the negative reaction to the

song might have stemmed from Lennon’s poetic license: the lyrics state what

“woman is,” not that “woman is treated as if she is.” The metaphor gives

the message its plaintive power and a sense of real indignation that would be

lacking if it were instead a simile, but it may have confused those who failed

to listen closely. A deeper critique is that, to a certain degree, the song reifies

the concept of “nigger” in order to make the metaphor work. Those wish-

ing to disavow the “reality” implied by the term are forced to think of the

song’s title statement as a metaphor based on an admittedly spurious socially

constructed concept; mental gymnastics that most were not accustomed to

having to perform in dealing with a pop song.

The recording begins with a jarring jump into the moderately paced and

comparatively simple melody bolstered by the successful application of a

Gimme Some Truth, 1970–1973 39

Spector-style “wall of sound” provided by Elephant’s Memory and a decid-

edly Beatlesesque string section, somewhat reminiscent of Lennon’s use

of strings on “I Am the Walrus” from The Beatles’
Magical Mystery Tour

soundtrack. The abrupt beginning immediately smoothes as Lennon’s soft

but firm and slightly echoed vocal announces the title followed by the affir-

mation “yes she is” and encouragement for the listener to “think about it”

before repeating the opening statement. This somewhat parallels his open-

ing to
Plastic Ono Band
’s “God,” in which he vocally underlines the shock-

ing opening statement by saying he will repeat it and then does so.

Lennon implicates the listener, and by extension the male-dominated social

system, in the hypocritical treatment of women by detailing the acts and

attitudes “we” have engaged in. Double standards, familial pressures, sexual

stereotyping, institutionalized sexism, and mass media images are all exempli-

fied and decried. With each line, Lennon’s voice becomes slightly stronger,

more plaintive, more accusatory, and more outraged. Lennon’s deceptively

natural-sounding vocal work includes numerous shouts of exhortation to the

listener. He also stretches out certain terms into long calls and moans, while

chopping up other words into approximations of sobbing. Before the second

instrumental break, Lennon encourages the band to “hit it!”

The low strings form the broiling bottom sound of the song, somehow

without making it seem as though there is anything solid there; again,

very similar to the use of strings on “I Am the Walrus.” At the same time,

the rough-edged sound of Elephant’s Memory builds tension against the

methodical pacing of the song. Instrumental solo breaks, first from saxo-

phone, and later from saxophone and guitar, punch through the existing

musical tension only to build the tension further. The swelling strings strain

and crash against Elephant’s Memory, and Lennon’s pleading vocals result-

ing in some concrete sonic fury without sounding cluttered. This works quite

well in supporting the intellectual and emotive impact of the lyrics and Len-

non’s passionate vocalizing.

Lennon then implores listeners to “do something” about the situation,

after proclaiming that woman is “the slave to the slave.” Finally, he cries

out for a response of agreement, calling for believers in the injustices dealt

woman to at least “scream about it” before he himself screams the closing

line over and over as the ascending low strings and screeching high strings

and guitars blanket and propel the vocals with wave after wave of sound.

It is a tour de force performance both instrumentally and especially vocally,

matched by the stacked and layered yet discomforting and ironically ephem-

eral sound of the production. It remains one of Lennon’s genuine, though

largely unacknowledged, masterpieces.

Ono’s cheerful feminist anthem “Sisters, O Sisters” opens with a spoken

joke as Ono chides the “male chauvinist pig engineer” and Lennon offers a

comically sneered “right on, sister!” in support. The song has a nice shuffle to

it as Ono sings encouragement directed to a female audience about women’s

40 The Words and Music of John Lennon

power to change the world for the better. Elephant’s Memory is particularly

spry here, with a momentum-gathering middle-eight section.

“Sisters, O Sisters” is followed by a dramatic song about the conditions at

New York’s Attica correctional facility and the aftermath of a deadly riot the

prisoners engaged in during September 1971 as a result of those conditions

with the opening line of “What a waste of human power.” Both Lennon and

Ono share songwriting credit as well as the lead vocal, a duet. A couple of

lines outline the situation in brief terms, clearly expecting that listeners know

the basic story. The lyrics quickly universalize the event, declaring, “We’re all

mates with Attica State,” and calling for the freedom of “all prisoners every-

where,” echoing Henry David Thoreau’s idea that in an unjust system, only

the just would be imprisoned. The sloganeering path continues with the lyr-

ics calling for all to join the revolution for human rights, eventually reaching

a low point with the rather diffused plea to “free us all from endless night.”

The song tries to decry the events at Attica on one hand, and use them as

a springboard for related commentaries on the other. Rather than building,

the song loses focus. At least musically the song has a nice groove, helped by

Lennon’s ringing guitar, which is used as a sort of instrumental response to

the vocals as he had done in “Cold Turkey.”

But the next track, “Born in a Prison,” does make good poetic use of