Authors: Ken Bielen Ben Urich
meaning since it implies a sexual component that never materializes in the
song, thereby presenting another Lennon joke as both the romance and
sexual liaison are denied.
Though lyrically bleak, the song glides between a leisurely pace with flow-
ing horn work and some jumpy funk rhythms with bongos and tight, sputter-
ing horns. The contrast provides a feeling of nervous energy, appropriate to
the anxious but somehow resigned mood. Lennon quotes his past work and
that of others throughout the album, and on this song he quotes his classic
Beatles recording “Help!” In the same melody as that song, but at a slower
pace, Lennon sings “Somebody please, please help me” very much as he had
in the earlier recording.
Elton John’s vocals are so prevalent on “Whatever Gets You through
the Night” that it almost feels like cheating to call this Lennon’s first solo
number-one single since the demise of The Beatles. Lennon continues the
clever musical and lyrical echoing and borrowing that permeate this album by
copying himself again. The melody that accompanies the title line is the same
as the opening of the line to
Imagine
’s “Jealous Guy,” as Lennon himself
recognizes in a composing tape included in the
John Lennon Anthology.
A
lengthier version of the rehearsal appeared on
The Lost Lennon Tapes.
“Whatever Gets You through the Night” is a jovial, high-energy rocker
that keeps moving from verse to chorus with a rollicking saxophone solo line
and handclaps. Elton John’s keyboard work underpins the track, sounding in
the same vein as his keyboard playing on his own energetic hit single “Honky
58 The Words and Music of John Lennon
Cat” from two years earlier. Lennon can be heard, though not always under-
stood, happily making comments in the midst of the instrumental passages,
including an opening remark that sounds vaguely like he is jokingly swear-
ing, though it is really unintelligible. At other points he shouts “hear me
woman!” and “take it easy, woman!” which are more discernable and make
sense in connection to the lyrics.
The lyrics are somewhat comically aphoristic, with such phrases as “don’t
need a watch to waste your time” and “don’t need a gun to blow your mind”
while more poetic and Ono-like is the statement “don’t need a sword to cut
through flowers.” The song’s chorus is one of pleading assurance, asking
for trust and proclaiming “I won’t do you no harm,” thus serving as an
excellent outgrowth of the verses’ confident fortune-cookie affirmations.
Positive, infectious, and rocking all the way, the recording restored Lennon’s
pop magic and helped propel the album to number one.
A writing collaboration with Harry Nilsson produced “Old Dirt Road,”
and Nilsson is credited vocally on the recording but is indistinguishable. He
later recorded his own version. Mournful and relaxed, the song has a slight
country and western feel, but it is not emphasized much and retains much of
a generic ballad feel. The slight song is all tone and mood, with lyrics that do
not make much literal sense but somehow sound right on an intuitive level.
The road is seen as a temporary anchor in a world where things are in a
state of indeterminate flux; a place where life is like “trying to shovel smoke
with a pitchfork in the wind,” a line reputedly provided by Nilsson. Even the
road is in danger of being covered by a mudslide, and all we can do is “keep
on keepin’ on” despite life’s vagaries. On this cut, Lennon quotes from the
song “Cool Water.” A traveler on the old dirt road encounters a person “lazy
bonin’,” who says the only thing needed is “cool, clear, water” just as it is
sung in the perennial country and western/folk favorite, which was a hit for
The Sons of the Pioneers in 1947–1948.
Opening up with an odd, warped-sounding count of “one,” echoing
Lennon’s shout of “Nine!” from his previous album, “What You Got” is
a solid, mid-paced, blues-tinged rocker with more than a little Latin funk
thrown in for good measure. Lennon takes the old saying “you don’t know
what you have until you lose it” as the core and tosses a few other standard say-
ings into the lyrics. The result is that the clichés take on an air of desperation;
the singer is trying to convince himself and find solace, however temporary,
in those old sayings. The clichés alternate between the self-recrimination of
the title and self-reassurance such as “you gotta hang on in.” The taut rush
of the song implies that the singer is trying to run away from himself and is
supported by the line “I’ve just got to run away” before he shouts “it’s such
a drag to face another day.”
One chorus quotes Little Richard’s “Rip It Up” with “Well, it’s Saturday
night and I just gotta rip it up.” Here it is not a call for exuberant celebration,
but a statement of hopeless anxiety, with the singer not knowing what else to
What You Got, 1973–1975 59
do or where to turn. “Give me one more chance,” he screams, as the energy
of the song propels the plea forward, but it remains unanswered.
The emotional panic gives way to recognition and resignation in “Bless
You,” one of Lennon’s strongest and most unique love songs. A rippling elec-
tric piano and gently cascading melody provide a floating effect to the slightly
jazzy music. The singer blesses the loved one, “wherever you are” and calls
the separated couple “restless spirits” that are still “in each other’s heart.” The
refrain reaffirms that the relationship may be repaired and continue because
outsiders do not comprehend the depth of the couple’s connection.
The second verse blesses the new lover of the beloved “whoever you are,”
and asks for the new lover to be “warm and kind hearted” while warning that
the old love will remain “now and forever.” There is no return to the chorus,
and the song bubbles along for a few bars before ending on a slightly ominous-
sounding chord, giving the song a final feeling of disquiet and unease in place
of the hopeful outlook expressed by the chorus after the first verse.
Lennon’s vocal performance is at once weary and earnest without being
cloying or overly dramatic. He wonderfully conveys the sense of having all
but given up, only holding out hope for reconciliation in the chorus. The
song’s second verse is not the sort of thing often heard in any genre of music,
and lifts the song out of the very good into the extraordinary. The song
could easily slip into the maudlin, but the tone is exemplary with a grand
fusion of effervescent instrumentals, yearning lyrics, and an emotionally real
performance.
The uneasy ending of “Bless You” leads into the mournful howling of a
wolf that opens “Scared.” The guitar picks up the howling sound and turns it
into a bending counterpoint that continues throughout the recording. Strip
the track of its production consisting of layered horns and the wolf howl
guitar, and its harrowing core is as brutal as anything on
John Lennon/Plastic
Ono Band.
But with those instruments in the mix, they paint the picture of a
confusing emotional maelstrom rather than exposed pain.
The simple admission “I’m scared, so scared” is soon explained. Life is
“what it is” and must be dealt with, but the price may be too high because
what little he has gained continues to “slip away.” “Scared” turns into
“scarred” for the second verse, where all Lennon says he has been able to do
is “manage to survive.” The frustration is all self-directed as Lennon sings
about his shortcomings. He will “sing out about love and peace” but he will
not face the “red raw meat” of his hatred and jealousy.
The last verse declares “I’m tired,” qualifying it with “tired of being alone
with no place to call my own.” But the feeling is much closer to one of existential
angst, being scared of the present and future, scarred by the past, and tired of
life’s battles. The trudging rhythm continues as the song fades out, implying
that the battles will continue.
Lennon’s second single release from the album, “#9 Dream,” was a languorous
account of a dream state, sharing something with his previous songs “I’m Only
60 The Words and Music of John Lennon
Sleeping” and “I’m So Tired” from his Beatles years. Sonically it bears some
closeness to “I Am the Walrus” as well. Built around the melody of the orches-
tration used for “Many Rivers to Cross” on the Harry Nilsson
Pussy Cats
album
produced by Lennon, and actually inspired by a dream, the song has an airy
majesty that is hard to define other than to say it is dreamlike fantasy.
A few bars of the opening guitar work, like other moments from Jesse
“Ed” Davis on this album, are graceful and reminiscent of George Harrison—
intentionally, according to some sources.7 Perhaps sleep and dreams are
respites from the pains expressed in “Scared.” Lennon sings of “magic in the
air,” and that accurately describes the orchestration’s otherworldly sound
here. Lennon’s vocals are appropriately hushed and tentative, even ask-
ing whether it was “just a dream” after all before surrendering the effort
to understand with relaxed acceptance. Lennon sings of “heat whispered
trees,” “a river of sound,” and other images worthy of “Lucy in the Sky
with Diamonds” before the chorus of the perplexing but somehow reassur-
ing “Ah, bawakawa pousse pousse” first interrupts and then later finalizes the
reveries. This connects with Lennon’s earlier blending of gibberish and real
non-English language words in The Beatles song “Sun King” from
Abbey
Road
in 1969.
Twice in the song, Lennon’s vocal intensity builds (“hear—hear—hear”
and “feel—feel—feel”) and then lets the tension evaporate into the chorus.
This is followed by a break in the rhythm as if the dreamer almost awoke
before falling back into the dream state. Lennon’s lover at the time, May
Pang, can be heard whispering “John” when he sings that he heard some-
body calling his name in the dream. Later she can be heard saying his name
backward, whereas some have said she is saying “Hare Krishna, George”
on behalf of John to George Harrison.8 It sounds like “nhoJ” to the hearer
though. With the remastered CD release in 2005, some fans accused Ono of
replacing Pang’s voice with her own but there seems to be no evidence for
the accusation; it might stem from the promotion film made for DVD release
in which Ono’s image is present at that point in the song, not Pang’s.9 The
single was a top-10 follow-up to “Whatever Gets You through the Night,”
peaking, as it surely had to, at number 9.
The shock of new love is the topic of “Surprise Surprise (Sweet Bird
of Paradox),” a song reportedly written in praise of Lennon’s off-and-on
lover for the last seven years of his life, May Pang. This is not the dawning
realization that love was meant to be as in
Mind Games
’ “Out the Blue,” but
sudden astonishment at self-centered lust (“She makes me sweat and forget
who I am”) giving way to love (“I need her,” “I love her”).
The pleasure of the realization is expressed in the jubilant and near-fractured
structure of the lyrics as well as the buoyant music. Lennon uses marginally
connected phrases to approximate the excitement that causes the thoughts
to leap ahead of themselves, and their expression to be disrupted as a result.
“Natural high ... butterfly,” he says, trying to describe his feelings, and later
What You Got, 1973–1975 61
“just like a willow tree ... a breath of spring.” “A bird of paradise,” he puns,
followed by “sunrise in her eyes.”
When he sings, “I need her,” he sounds surprised at the realization, won-
dering how long his feelings and/or the relationship can go on. Finally, he
crosses into the manic repeating of “I love her” in a higher and higher pitch
until he is in falsetto shouting “Sweet-sweet, sweet-sweet love!” over and
over as the song fades. This is another joke and borrowing from his past, as
the phrase follows the melody and rhythm of “Beep-beep, beep-beep, yeah!”
from the ending of The Beatles’ “Drive My Car.” The song is primarily
McCartney’s composition, but Lennon made contributions to the song, so it
is not clear whether he is quoting himself or his former Beatle collaborator.
From the manic, the album shifts to the poisonous rage of “Steel and
Glass,” a companion to “How Do You Sleep?” from
Imagine.
Both songs
attack someone Lennon depended on and felt betrayed by—McCartney in
the earlier track and The Beatles’ and Lennon’s one-time manager Allen
Klein in “Steel and Glass.” Neither man is named directly, but the clues are
not difficult to follow if one is familiar with Lennon’s history. The songs
are similar in tone and structure, even to some degree in arrangement with
strident strings stretching over choppy horns on the later track instead of