Authors: Ken Bielen Ben Urich
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