Authors: Ken Bielen Ben Urich
something that does not feel right to “screw it.” The verses tell the story of
the protagonist’s state of mind with some precise images, such as the open-
ing “blues around my head.” Lennon’s compact lyrical structure continues
with a few home details, singing, for example, that “the cats have all been
blessed.”
Other, subsequently released versions of the song contain an additional
verse about a doctor who steps out dancing for the odd reason of sweetening
up his breath. The shift to a verse about someone other than the narrator and
the offbeat explanation for his behavior was wisely eliminated during rehears-
als. This was the third single released from the album and became a small hit,
making it to number 55 in the United States.
Ono’s “Sleepless Night” follows, as if the man’s having stepped out for the
night has put the woman into a state of frustration, sexual and otherwise. The
song gulps along as the singer continues in a state of emotional and physical
unease, broken up by a bit of sexual humor.
“I Don’t Wanna Face It” is the real rocker on the album and a standout
track in all respects. The song has several blistering guitar passages supporting
much of it, similar to Lennon’s late 1960s or early 1970s rumbling volcano
sounds during his minimalist phase. This alternates with a catchy rhythmic
riff that kicks the song off after Lennon’s characteristically free-form count in
of “Un, deux, ein, zwei, hickle-pickle” and returns a few times throughout
the number. This song finds its slot from the first note and successfully gal-
lops with it to the end.
What the words refuse to face is the sense of self and responsibility in rela-
tionship to the rest of humanity. Once again Lennon’s lyrical control is firm,
as he looks into the mirror and dialogues with himself about these issues.
Lennon blends clichés with sharp descriptions and ironic juxtapositions, such
as “lookin’ for oblivion with one eye on the hall of fame” and a saying he may
have found in the work of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz: “You wanna save
humanity, but it’s people that you just can’t stand.” Schulz’s character Linus
had made the same observation in a
Peanuts
daily cartoon strip years before
Lennon used the line.
The introspective lecture contains obvious references to Lennon himself
as a seeker of “peace and love” and the leader of a “big ol’ band,” a possible
reference to The Beatles. The singer further chides himself for looking for
a “world of truth” while always refusing to see himself for what he really is.
There is a final hopeful assurance, though, as the last lyric of the last verse
states that the promised land can be seen and the singer is sure he can make
it to that destination.
I Don’t Wanna Face It, 1981–1988 89
Lennon’s vocal performance is vigorous, even for him. He resurrects some
of his barking and yelping sounds, not heard since The Beatles’ “Hey Bull-
dog.” There they were used for comic commentary and effect in relation to
the song’s topic, but here it is Lennon’s sheer dynamism that propels him
to make the noises. As the song fades, Lennon howls and then shouts in a
startled manner, “every time I look in the mirror, I don’t see anybody there!
Whoo!” This remark was a key part of the lyrics for his unfinished song “Mir-
ror, Mirror (On the Wall).”
Certainly it is pointless to argue with success, and this album produced
three hits for Lennon. Had this track been a single, there might have been
four. As it stands, the song justifiably takes its place as one of Lennon’s better
tracks, even in its not-quite-finished form.
Other recorded takes show a similar drive. In a version on the
John Lennon
Anthology,
Lennon cues guitarist Earl Slick by shouting his name with a gusto
not heard in other session recordings. At the end of this take, the playing
breaks down into random noise, in a way similar to the connecting section
between “I’m Losing You” and “I’m Moving On” from the earlier-issued
Double Fantasy
album. It sounds intentional and may have been an idea
Lennon transferred to those other recordings. As the take finishes, Lennon
notes, “my picks get half the size!” It is just that kind of performance.
What seems to be Ono’s song in response to the anxiety of self-reflection
is “Don’t Be Scared,” a song Lennon may have known in some form. The
song suggests that fear of commitment to a relationship is really the fear of
committing to life and that the joy is in the journey, not the destination.
It is a sparse-sounding track, like several of Ono’s efforts on this album.
The approach may be her attempt not to overshadow Lennon’s unpolished
works, or to match the emotionally direct content of the lyrics with a direct
unadorned sound.
A jaunty number called “Nobody Told Me” was the first single released
from the album and is reputed to have been one of the titles Lennon was
working on to give to Ringo Starr for his next album. A rolling bass line
anchors the song that swings along merrily at a moderate rocking pace. A few
instrumental flourishes here and there add a bit of spark to the piece, but the
band functions at a point of being tight enough to allow themselves to be
loose and the song’s feeling of spontaneity has enough momentum for it all
to gel.
The lyrics of the verses are more or less a series of inconsistencies from the
start, with “everybody’s talkin’ but no one says a word” and such near-Zen
observations as “everybody’s flying, but never touch the sky.” Each verse
ends with an out-of-place statement that doesn’t seem to follow from the
preceding statements, such as the line repeated from “Move over Ms. L”:
“They’re starvin’ back in China, so finish what you got.” Earlier, it was,
“There’s Nazis in the bathroom, just below the stair.” The chorus doesn’t
try to make sense of these situations, but just accepts them with the comment
90 The Words and Music of John Lennon
that “nobody told me there’d be days like these” before adding “strange days
indeed” and “most peculiar, mama!”
The mood is light and humorous with a slight undertone of possible unease
that finally dissipates in the chorus. At first listen, the song seems slight and
easily dismissible, a pleasurable effort with little substance. But repeated lis-
tening provides insight into some greater depth behind the innocuous per-
plexities of the words and the bouncy lilt of the music. The appeal of the song
definitely grows, and that may partly account for its becoming a top-five hit
in the United States.
Ono comments and builds on Lennon’s observations by declaring that
the only sane response to a world of peculiarities is to give up one’s sanity
in her short song “O’Sanity.” Again, Ono uses humor to make her point:
“psychotic builds a castle and neurotic lives in it.”
At last, after a decade and a half of working reggae riffs into numerous
compositions and recordings, Lennon composed “Borrowed Time,” the
closest he came to a full-out reggae effort. The song was released as a single
and did not fare well in the United States; it failed to chart because reggae
rhythms never caught on with the U.S. mass listening public as much as they
had in England, where the song charted at number 32.5
The lyrics extol the idealistic virtues of growing older. The first section
describes the hesitancy and unsure state of being younger, characterizing it
as living in “deep despair” and the “illusion of freedom and power.” The
chorus reminds listeners that we are “living on borrowed time, without a
thought for tomorrow.” After the first verse, this emphasizes the callow lack
of awareness of youth.
The second and third verses showcase that being older is better, because
a little experience has brought understanding and clarity and “less compli-
cations.” This time the chorus, verbally the same, says that it is possible to
live in and for the moment without worry over the future. The song ends
with a comic monologue from Lennon about leaving the angst of young
love behind and trading it for physical infirmity. But having made the point,
he cheerfully scat-sings a drum solo as the song moves toward its conclu-
sion. Once again, Lennon’s serious insights are kept from being either heavy
handed or clichéd by his wry sense of humor.
In “Your Hands,” Ono sings fully and powerfully in Japanese and concur-
rently gives a soft-spoken English translation of the words. Various aspects of
the beloved’s physical self are dreamt about (hands, skin, mouth, arms, eyes)
between choruses that declare, “no matter how many times we meet,” even
over several life times, “it’s not enough.”
Presumably inspired by either May Pang or Ono, “(Forgive Me) My Little
Flower Princess” has little going for it aside from a functional semi-shuffling
rhythm. This is a very unfinished composition, and Lennon drops words and
phrases in a song that appears to be about the power of forgiveness in roman-
tic relationships. A couple of lines show a little promise, such as “take up the
I Don’t Wanna Face It, 1981–1988 91
dance where we left off,” for example, but the rest are banal and mundane.
The song has no chorus or middle-eight section and offers only fragmentary
and fractured lyrics. Taking this into consideration and in view of his store
of other potential contenders, it is puzzling that Lennon even brought this
one to the sessions. But, of course, it is not known what he ultimately had
in mind.
If the male agenda set the topic of the dialogues previously, the female
voice takes the lead at this point on the disc. In a conscious attempt to link
sonically with Lennon’s “Grow Old with Me,” which existed only on a dem-
onstration cassette, Ono provides a demo tape of her companion song “Let
Me Count the Ways.” Like Lennon’s recording, the only accompaniment is
piano.
In the album liner notes, Ono relates that the two songs were originally
the inspiration and planned backbone for
Double Fantasy
but were put off so
long that it was decided to make them the core of the follow-up album. The
songs were inspired by the famous poems of Robert Browning and Eliza-
beth Barrett Browning. Ono’s effort takes the first line of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning’s poem and the idea behind it, but then goes its own way in four
stanzas that enumerate not only “the ways how I love you” but also how the
loved one is missed, viewed, and has touched the speaker. Musically, the song
has a simple intensity that underscores the verbal pleading for the chance to
convince the loved one how much he is cared for.
“Grow Old with Me” is Lennon’s companion song and shows greater
closeness to its inspirational source and model, as if Lennon might have
started off contemplating merely setting the poem to music at one point. In
any event, it manages to be pure and exact in form and content—a guileless
expression of idealized, heartfelt love.
Sadly, Lennon never created a professional recording of the song, and all
that exists is the cassette version. On this, Lennon plays piano and is accom-
panied by a rhythm box that keeps time very well but spoils the mood of the
song. Furthermore, Lennon sings in a high voice, possibly falsetto, and even
taking into account the low sound quality of the source material, his voice
sounds thin to the point of distraction. Some accounts claim that this was
one of the four songs Ono gave the three surviving Beatles to work with and
would have been the third release after “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” for
the Beatles’
Anthology
sets.6 However, they opted to do nothing with the
track after a quick try at creating some new backing for it.
In the album’s liner notes, Ono relates that she and Lennon had planned
on a big, lush orchestral arrangement and production for the song, hoping
it would become a new standard for weddings and anniversaries. In fact, in
the
John Lennon Anthology
collection, an overdubbed version of “Grow Old
with Me” is included and it marks an intriguing posthumous collaboration
between Lennon and The Beatles’ producer, George Martin. It is not clear
when this was done, but the reasonable assumption is that it was done after
92 The Words and Music of John Lennon
the Threetles, as fans called the surviving Beatles, officially abandoned their
work on it.
Martin’s arrangement has to be careful not to swamp the frail-sounding,
low-fidelity original that does not sound as though it has been given as much
of the studio restoration wizardry treatment that the Threetles gave the two
tracks they completed. Even so, Martin’s recognizable sound, so associated
with The Beatles, is readily evident. His baroque-inspired arrangement begins
with flowing strings and later includes a solo flute that provides short coun-
termelody embellishments. Simple supporting brass variations can at times be