(The Praeger Singer-Songwriter Collection) Ben Urish, Ken Bielen-The Words and Music of John Lennon-Praeger (2007) (2 page)

several months “Beatlemania” was born and spreading, reaching the United

States in full force early in 1964.

By the end of the following year, Lennon’s songwriting had matured. As

a craftsman, he could do what was required quite well, often to levels of

brilliance. But for him, that was increasingly no longer satisfying artistically.

Lennon’s songs became more overtly personal in terms of topic, more freely

expressive in terms of lyrics, and sonically more evocative. They had to say

something meaningful, both in the form and the content, or to him they

were of lesser value. For Lennon, a song of his was “good” if it expressed

and communicated real emotions, ideas, or events, regardless of whether it

was successful in terms of professional polish or chart success. The reverse

held true as well. A song of his may have been excellent at the level of craft,

structure, story, and harmony, but if it did not express and communicate

xvi Introduction

something vital, he considered it empty hack work and was often the most

dismissive critic of his own efforts.

The Beatles’ unprecedented popularity continued as musical styles and

interests changed during the socially turbulent 1960s. By early 1970, the

individual Beatles went their separate artistic ways, having jointly amassed 51

singles in the top 40, 34 in the top 10, and 20 number-1 hits.1 In the decades

since, the group’s recordings continued to find both relevance and sales with

new, large audiences.

Lennon’s pop music innovations while in The Beatles spanned music,

lyrics, and recording techniques. These innovations continued as his cre-

ative partnership with Paul McCartney dissolved and another creative part-

nership, with avant-garde conceptual and performance artist Yoko Ono,

evolved.

Lennon continued to have erratic chart successes for post-Beatles singles

and albums, having 13 charting singles and 8 charting musical albums

during his lifetime, with another 6 singles charting in the eight years after

his murder. Yet only one of those singles topped the charts at number one

during his life. It was both his at-times discomforting emotional honesty

and his espousing of and devotion to controversial social and radical politi-

cal causes in his music and otherwise that arguably hampered the mass

appeal legacy he inherited as a former Beatle. Efforts such as “Mother”

were not dance-floor friendly, and, excellent though it is, Lennon could

not have expected the provocative “Woman Is the Nigger of the World”

to have had much appeal in the pop market of 1972. A similar statement

could be made regarding his more innovative work done in support of

Ono; though readily available, such work did not find much favor with

former Beatlemaniacs.

Yet he did release those recordings, and his status as a former Beatle at least

garnered them some notice. Lennon naturally sought the largest possible audi-

ence for his music. His relishing of the experimental aside, he was, after all, a

pop musician. When he could combine mainstream success with his need to say

something of value, as with “Instant Karma!” or “Imagine,” that was ideal.

After his greatest solo chart success and a flurry of collaborations with

other performers, Lennon did not formally record for almost five years.

Then, scarcely a month after the release of his “comeback” album, he was

shot to death as he entered his apartment building in New York City. The

resulting worldwide display of grief and memorials demonstrated not just

nostalgia for The Beatles or their era in general or Lennon in particular, but

recognition that Lennon had achieved iconic status. He had become a liv-

ing legend. Lennon might have alternately been bemused by this and railed

against it, but it had happened—and in the decades since, this process has

only intensified.

But Lennon was an all-too-real flesh-and-blood human, both as frail and

as strong as any. Many examples of his work, musical and otherwise, have

become available posthumously, and they illuminate the man as well as the

artist. What we are left with is the intensity of his thoughts, the clarity of his

questions, the concern within his humor, and the pain within his triumphs.

Scope and organization

As is the case with all of the books in this series, the focus of this volume is on

the music, lyrics, and recordings of our subject. For this volume, that is John

Lennon, but John Lennon apart from The Beatles. Some might contend that

this is an artificial break, and to a certain degree it is. Yet having been made

numerous times elsewhere, the case does not need to be made here for the

exceptional nature of The Beatles’ work and Lennon’s contributions to that

body of work. Compared to the academic coverage of The Beatles’ material,

Lennon’s post-Beatle compositions and recordings, even in light of his killing,

remain unfairly neglected with only a handful of attempts to do them justice.

Although this work focuses on John Lennon’s “solo”—or, more accu-

rately, post-Beatle—years, clearly, it is impossible to totally ignore his work

as a singer-songwriter while a member of The Beatles. Just as clearly, his later

career would not have been the same had he never been a Beatle. Much of

the sociohistorical and artistic weight Lennon’s post-Beatle output carries

results from his having been a Beatle.

Much that is, but not all. Lennon himself saw his life’s creative output as

one large mosaic.2 His solo artistry and influence not only illuminate what he

gave to The Beatles (and what the experience gave to him), but comprise a

significant contribution on their own.

More so than all but a few other pop music artists, Lennon was able to fuse

experiments in technology, instrumentation, lyrics, and song form into artis-

tically and commercially successful recordings. Whether expressing emotions,

explaining philosophies, protesting social situations, or ruminating on the

joys and pains of romantic or familial entanglements, few have been Lennon’s

equal and none his better.

The book is arranged chronologically with minor exceptions where some

posthumously released recordings may be discussed then as opposed to when

they were recorded for reasons explained in the text at those points. This is

by no means a full-scale biography of John Lennon. Yet, as with many art-

ists, and with Lennon more than most, the biography does not just underlay

the art; it is directly and explicitly woven into it. Many of Lennon’s musical

creations are overt editorials on what was happening to him, or about what

issues were of immediate concern to him at the time of their creation. In

many instances, Lennon’s biography and artistic enterprises mesh, and as a

result our discussions do as well.

Obviously Lennon’s post-Beatles body of work was first curtailed by his

voluntary self-removal from the music industry, and then by his slaying. Yet

he was incredibly productive from the start of The Beatles’ recording career

xviii Introduction

until his withdrawal from recording early in 1975. Since his shooting, sev-

eral composition tapes, home demos, studio recordings, and even completed

songs have been released and may continue to be. But it is not the mere num-

ber of Lennon’s compositions and recordings that intrigues; it is their con-

tent and quality. An analysis of Lennon’s work that aims to straddle academic

and mainstream audiences is, we hope, a welcome addition to the Beatles and

Lennon literature available.

In keeping with the scope of the Praeger Singer-Songwriter Collection, we

have focused on Lennon’s musical compositions that he recorded, and have

further focused on particularly notable songs from each of his albums. That

said, we have not left out any studio recording that Lennon composed and

completed recording during his lifetime, and we have included uncompleted

compositions and recordings that we deem most significant.

In addition, we have commented as thoroughly as seems appropriate,

given the focus of this series, on Lennon’s significant musical works in col-

laboration with others (again, post-Beatles), notably with Yoko Ono. The

full range of Lennon’s efforts in conjunction with other musicians—whether

vocal, instrumental, in composition, or in production—is discussed in the

context of his other musical endeavors.

Because of his status as a former Beatle, Lennon had enormous artistic con-

trol over his work. Outside of a handful of collaborations as a “guest star,” he

produced all of his post-Beatle recordings, often in collaboration with Ono,

Phil Spector, or both. The one exception to that rule, the
Oldies but Goldies

project, fell apart and Lennon had to take over complete control to finish

the project. His recordings may have at times been unsettling enough to be

censored or outright banned from broadcast or sales, but during his lifetime

they were as he wanted them or they did not get released. Naturally, this does

not apply to the uncompleted, posthumously released recordings.

Because the aim of this series is to provide a guide to the recordings and

compositions of the singer-songwriters under discussion, we have provided a

discography of Lennon’s key post-Beatles recordings. The index includes all

of the songs mentioned in the text, including those written, co-written, and/

or recorded by Lennon; songs he recorded but did not write; and songs which

Lennon neither wrote nor recorded, but which we have discussed in the text.

Lennon had a playful, adventurous, questioning, and concerned spirit.

Those attributes variously imbued his artistic endeavors. Both in The Beatles

and beyond, there is usually a sense of joyful wonder coupled with an intense

honesty underlying Lennon’s work that is frequently difficult to adequately

explain. The more we attempt to put our finger on it, the more it slips away—

to paraphrase something we heard somewhere. No matter what his topic—be

it a straightforward love song, an angry polemic, or a surreal bit of nonsense—

Lennon expressed some aspect of himself that was real, and in so doing, either

clarified it for all of us or at least shed some light on it for future understand-

ing. We hope we have done something similar with his words and music.

1

In My Life: The Early Years

John Winston Lennon (later John Ono Lennon) was born on October 9,

1940, in the midst of a bomb raid during the Second World War in the port

city of Liverpool, England.1 His father, Fred Lennon, was a merchant seaman

who had only sporadic contact with his family during the war; he moved away

within a year after the war’s end, having no further contact with his son until

after fame had arrived. Later in life, Fred Lennon remarried and fathered

another two sons. Lennon and his father had minimal contact until Fred

Lennon’s death in 1976.2

At an early age, Lennon’s mother, Julia (maiden name Stanley), by most

accounts a free spirit, turned over her son’s rearing to her stern sister Mimi

and Mimi’s husband George Smith, though she kept in sporadic contact with

him. Julia soon had three daughters by two different men. As Lennon entered

his teens, she began to have closer contact with him, including teaching him

rudimentary banjo playing. This deepening relationship was cut short by her

accidental killing by an inebriated, off-duty police officer in the summer of

1958, when Lennon was 17 years old. Lennon maintained sporadic contact

with his two youngest half-sisters (the eldest had been adopted by a family in

Sweden shortly after her birth) until his slaying.3

Bright enough to be bored and disenchanted enough to be rebellious,

by all accounts Lennon slid through his schooling, only applying himself to

expressive projects such as artwork or writing. Talented but disinterested and

directionless, Lennon spent his early teens withdrawn into a small circle of

close friends, and bonding with his affable uncle George, who died unexpec-

tedly in 1955, when Lennon was just 14.

The Words and Music of John Lennon

LyricaL infLuences

While not evident in his earliest songwriting, the short stories, sketches,

and essays that made up Lennon’s first two books clearly evidence the influ-

ence of the fantasy, illogic, and nonsense literary achievements of Edward

Lear, Lewis Carroll, and W. S. Gilbert. What in Lennon’s lyrics many have

attributed to the influence of psychedelic drugs more properly has its roots in

Victorian-era wordplay humor.4

Lennon’s imagination and tart sense of humor were also in accord with the

absurdist drolleries of such British comedy troupes as The Crazy Gang and

The Goons, a humor tradition that led to Lennon’s contemporaries such as

Beyond the Fringe and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. As Lennon’s lyrical

composing matured, he often combined his comical wordplay and imagina-