Authors: Ken Bielen Ben Urich
love because the last time he saw her she was “wearing a man’s clothes.”
He declares that he is not prejudiced but that he “had problems with the
zipper.” Or at least that is what it sounds like he’s saying. After that, he tells
us “there’s two basses in this, an’ I hope you appreciate it.”
Outtakes of Spector versions of this are painful to listen to, as Lennon
drunkenly fumes and sputters his way through the song out of tune, missing
entrances, and spouting profanities. On the 2004 CD reissue, Ono includes
a snippet of one of these performances where Lennon says hello to his former
Beatle band mates.
And so the marginally frustrating album ends. The overly thick and some-
times ponderous production gets in the way of the spirited performances
enough times to keep this from being the superb album fans expected. But
more than half the tracks hold up well enough to make it enjoyable, if all the
more frustrating for the remainder that do not quite live up to their promise.
Considering the circumstances of its creation, the fact that the album was
not totally abandoned or sapped of all drive is something of an achievement
in itself.
Also included on the 2004 CD reissue are versions of “Angel Baby,”
“To Know Her Is To Love Her,” and “Since My Baby Left Me”—but not
70 The Words and Music of John Lennon
“Be My Baby,” thus oddly keeping the CD from being complete by not
encompassing all of the legally released
Rock
’
N
’
Roll/Roots
tracks. The first
two songs are the same as on
Menlove Ave.
(all three are discussed in chapter
6 in the section about that album), but “Since My Baby Left Me” is not the
same take, running almost a minute longer. Lennon’s performance is more
assured on this version, but the chorus is less controlled with the harmonies
and “response” to Lennon’s “call” faltering quite a few times.
David Bowie: “Across the Universe” and “Fame”
Riding high on the success of
Walls and Bridges
and having completed
the revived
Rock ’N’ Roll
sessions, Lennon accepted an offer from David
Bowie to join him to work on a cover version of Lennon’s comparatively (and
unjustly) obscure (at the time) Beatles track “Across the Universe.” Bowie
drops the “Jai Guru Deva Om” part of the refrain and overdubs himself in
a typically histrionic performance as Lennon adds some restrained guitar.
The sessions took place while Lennon’s collaboration with Elton John on his
Beatles classic “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was topping the charts.
During a rehearsal jam, the duo, with guitarist Carlos Alomar (who later
sang in the chorus for Lennon and Ono’s
Milk and Honey
album), eventually
developed the song “Fame,” which became a number-one hit for Bowie in the
summer of 1975. A semi-funk riff percolates throughout the song and bears
similarities to Lennon’s work with Ono in late 1972 and early 1973 (such as
“She Hits Back”) while looking ahead to sounds employed on various tracks
of
Double Fantasy.
Guitarist Earl Slick is on the cut, and he became one of the
guitarists for Lennon and Ono’s
Double Fantasy
album sessions.
The lyrics describe several vagaries associated with fame—some serious,
some mocking, and some absurd. The title is shouted out at various inter-
vals, with the tone usually bent, overlapping, and echoed until finally its
speed is distorted in a downward-toned cascade. It might be Lennon’s voice
that can barely be picked out of the mix on a couple of the shouted “is it
any wonder?” moments, but with the inclusion of other voices (including
Fanny co-founder and bassist Jean Millington) and electronic alterations, it is
impossible to discern his other recorded contributions. The best guess is that
Lennon contributed some of the higher-pitched vocal sounds.
5
Cleanup Time, 1975–1980
By the beginning of summer 1975 Lennon was allowing his career to wind
down. Over the next year he signed no new recording contracts and all but
stopped giving interviews. His wife was pregnant; he either had met his per-
forming and recording obligations or had specific plans in the works to do so;
his public appearances became fewer and fewer; and, at long last, his immigra-
tion struggles were beginning to break in his favor. His second child, another
son, was born in October 1975, and he was granted permanent residency
status in July 1976.
For the next four years, Lennon was mostly out of the public eye. Lennon
(and, for that matter, Ono) produced nothing professionally during this
time. After his shooting, posthumous releases of home recordings and writ-
ings evidenced that Lennon sporadically composed songs, recorded himself
for his own amusement, and concocted surreal and comic sound collages
and narratives during this period. This runs counter to interviews he gave
during the last months of his life, in which he declared he did not so much as
touch his guitar for five years.1 Despite his remarks to the contrary, Lennon
did compose and polish new material during his self-imposed professional
exile. Some of the songs were finished, and others were not. A few were
cannibalized for other compositions and the remaining shells abandoned.
Perhaps he meant his remarks to be taken in a purely professional capacity.
In any event, some (but not all) of the more superior recordings he made
during these years were included in
The Lost Lennon Tapes
radio series and
have been issued on CD.
In a 1977 interview in Japan, Lennon confirmed that he was taking time off
until his son Sean was about five years old, at which point he was considering
72 The Words and Music of John Lennon
returning in some capacity to the public eye.2 That proved to be the case, for
in late summer 1980, Lennon began recording polished demos of new mate-
rial and some of the songs he had been toying with over the last five years.
Ono joined in, and by August they were in a professional studio, making
what would become the
Double Fantasy
album.
Shaved FiSh
October 1975 saw Lennon’s 35th birthday coinciding with the birth of
his second son and the only release of a “greatest hits” album collection
that Lennon himself compiled. It is credited to “John Lennon: Plastic Ono
Band.” The collection is somewhat inexplicably titled
Shaved Fish,
which is
perhaps intended to comment on the “commercial product” as implied by
the artwork on the back of the album cover, which depicts a partially opened
tin of fish on shaved ice. The front cover is equally intriguing, with sketches
to convey the meaning of each of the songs included.
The strength of the collection resides in the fact that, at the time of release,
it was the only collection of Lennon’s nonalbum singles as well as his con-
troversial singles that had smaller sales. All of Lennon’s album singles up
to that time, with the exception of “Stand by Me,” are included. Lennon
eschews strict chronological order and bookends the collection with differ-
ent (though both incomplete) performances of “Give Peace a Chance.” He
begins the record with the first minute of the single and ends the collection
with a chorus sequence from the performance at the One to One concert. In
later interviews, Lennon said he wanted to be sure the lesser-selling singles
were not forgotten and properly archived, and the best way to ensure that
was to produce this album.3 There would not be another Lennon album for
five years.
A FinAl CollAborAtion: ringo StArr’S
“Cookin’ (in the kitChen oF love)”
Once again Starr called and Lennon answered. An April 1976 session to
record “Cookin’ (In the Kitchen of Love)” was Lennon’s first time in a pro-
fessional recording studio since his collaboration with David Bowie in Janu-
ary 1975 and would be Lennon’s last until the
Double Fantasy
sessions began
in August 1980. The resulting song is a slight, innocuous rock-pop tune that
harmlessly bounces along to its somewhat forced party atmosphere conclu-
sion. Ono later incorporated the song into the musical play about Lennon’s
life that she mounted in 2004 to 2005.
In 1980, Lennon again came to Starr’s aid as Starr began preparations
for what would be his
Stop and Smell the Roses
album of 1981. Lennon was
reportedly turning a handful of his incomplete compositions into possible
numbers for Starr, including “I’m Stepping Out” and a song called “Life
Cleanup Time, 1975–1980 73
Begins at 40.”4 Only home demos of the latter song exist because Lennon
never recorded a studio version of the song. Some accounts contend that it,
like “I’m the Greatest,” would be another Billy Shears song, while Internet
rumors indicated that it might have been under consideration for completion
by the surviving Beatles for the mid-1990s
Anthology
collection.5
PreSent in AbSentiA
Lennon may not have been producing any new recordings for public con-
sumption, but that did not mean he was totally out of the public or industry
consciousness by a long shot. Every time a former Beatle released an album,
Lennon was mentioned, and his and George Harrison’s lack of new material
was regularly addressed in trade journals and fan magazines. Harrison had a
more than two-year gap between albums, having released nothing between
Thirty Three & 1/3
in November 1976 and
George Harrison
in February
1979. During the dry period of no albums of new material from Lennon
from February 1975 to October 1980, McCartney released five albums,
Starr three, and Harrison three even with his hiatus. So, approximately
every six months, there was a new album release, and the resulting public-
ity, from a former Beatle. In addition, repackaged Beatles materials were
released with regularity, and even “new” Beatles material kept Lennon, to
some degree at least, in the public eye, if inadvertently. Although an analysis
is beyond the purview of this work, the Beatles’ releases bear mentioning
in that context.
The repackaging of Beatles materials was indeed fairly common, but the
release of legal, previously unheard material was rare. In 1977, two different
collections of The Beatles performing live were released. The first was argu-
ably the more interesting, because the recording predated their complete rise
to fame but postdated Ringo Starr’s entry into the band. It was
The Beatles
Live! At the Star Club.
The sound quality was poor, but the release included
several songs never otherwise recorded by the Beatles, and it is fascinating to
hear them. Lennon jokes with and taunts the audience and is in fine form on
several numbers.
Live at the Hollywood Bowl
came out a few months later and was an album
culled from the group’s performances at that famous venue in 1964 and
1965 by their producer George Martin and made to sound like one show.
The screams of Beatlemania take a while to get used to, but eventually the
band can be enjoyed. Lennon’s humorous remarks are part of the album’s
highlights, and it is certainly an auditory time capsule of historic interest in
addition to fun listening. It has not been issued on CD, and arguably another
blending of the concerts should be attempted for a proper CD release.
The next year saw EMI release a box set of The Beatles’ entire catalog
with a bonus album of, and called,
Rarities.
The album was then released in
1979 on its own but exists in two very different versions. The British version
74 The Words and Music of John Lennon
consists of obscure Beatle B-sides and singles that never made it on to any
album collection. Even by the late 1970s, there were still several such tracks
in the group’s catalog. Releasing “new” material was complicated because
different countries had released different collections of these recordings, so
some were available on an album in some nations but not in others. There was
no universally consistent release of this material. It was not until 1988 that
official album releases of all of this material finally came out as two albums
with the punning titles of
Past Masters
Volumes One and Two.
The
Rarities
album released in the United States was rather more esoteric.
This was not an album of missing B-sides, but true obscurities. Listeners were
treated to such tracks as “Penny Lane” with a bit more piccolo trumpet solo,
“I Am the Walrus” with an extra beat or two of strings, and a mono version
of a recording commonly known only in stereo or vice versa. Sometimes
only hardcore Beatlemaniacs could tell the variant version from the classic,
and many of them did not care to make the effort. If the group’s albums
were not considered such sacrosanct entities, such rarities would have made