Authors: Ken Bielen Ben Urich
non jokes that he hopes people “recognized it” as a result.
The Beatles’ “Come Together” is next, and, again, Lennon’s vocals seem
strained and he misses a couple of notes. However, paired with the loose feel
of Elephant’s Memory, the song trades the oddly threatening sound of the
original for a nice rollicking effort that seems to please the crowd and Lennon
himself. This is the third number that is also available from the evening set
and, like the other two, sounds more assured overall, especially in Lennon’s
vocals but also noticeably stronger in the drumming and in the guitar work.
Lennon shouts, “stop the war!” near the end, instead of “over me!” and then
adds a couple of shrieks for extra emphasis, not needing to worry about sav-
ing his voice anymore.
Ono’s “Born in a Prison” (video only) then leads into “Imagine,” with
Lennon pushing his nascent feminist awareness to the point of altering the
lyrics to call for both a brotherhood “and sisterhood” of man. This time,
however, the catch-as-catch-can feel of the band detracts from the gentle
mood of the song, and it lacks some of the impact that Lennon’s simpler live
acoustic versions have.
For the third time, a recorded live version of “Cold Turkey” is presented,
and it is somewhere between the lilting version from
Live Peace in Toronto
and the wonderfully harsh tour de force on the bonus disc of
Some Time in
New York City.
The concert ends with an earnest version of “Hound Dog”
that somehow never really gels, despite some good work from the band and
Lennon’s raucous vocals. An abbreviated version of “Give Peace a Chance”
is chanted, bookending the concert with the opening chant from “Power to
the People.”
Menlove Ave.
The second Lennon album released in 1986—
Menlove Ave.
—is taken from
material recorded during the misnamed “lost weekend” of September 1973
to February 1975. The first half contains two new Lennon compositions and
some songs not used for the
Rock ’N’ Roll
album (one was on
Roots
). The
rest is made up of rehearsals of some of the numbers from
Walls and Bridges.
I Don’t Wanna Face It, 1981–1988 97
It is interesting to compare the rehearsals to the final versions in view of
how the songs sounded when finished, using the comparison to ponder what
Lennon might have done with the similar-sounding rehearsals that made up
his input to the posthumously released
Milk and Honey.
The album opens with its strongest track, “Here We Go Again,” a song-
writing collaboration with Phil Spector, who produced as well. If the song
has a weakness, it is the characteristic Spector background. Swirling and
majestic at its best, the Spector signature sometimes becomes busy and dis-
tracting, dwarfing Lennon’s vocal efforts but not enough to spoil the num-
ber. Lennon’s vocals build and veer from rough, almost spoken whispers to
full-on screams to great effect. The lyrics deal with the dreary and desultory
and must reflect Lennon’s sense of ennui at the start of his “lost weekend.”
“Nobody gives a damn,” he sings before recalling his early Beatles hit by
proclaiming “nobody wants to hold your hand.”
The song would not fit as part of the proposed
Oldies but Goldies
project,
but it might have been a worthwhile addition to
Walls and Bridges,
most
closely of a piece thematically with “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down
and Out)” or “Scared.” A remake or different mix might have been needed
to make it sonically closer to the album, but otherwise it would have been
worthy.
“Rock ’n’ Roll People” is the simple straight-ahead rocker that was
attempted by Lennon during the
Mind Games
sessions but then abandoned
and given to Johnny Winter, who made the most of its simple strengths.
Lyrically, the song is another of Lennon’s non sequitur wordplay pieces (“my
father was a mother, my mother was a son”) with a refrain that extols the vir-
tues of “sweet sweet rock and roll.” Lennon’s version here has some strong
guitar work, and the performance is good enough but lacks that special spark
the song needs to lift it past the perfunctory. Other takes heard on
The Lost
Lennon Tapes
are more exuberant, but, once finding the groove, Lennon was
apparently unwilling to relinquish it. The takes go on until Lennon and the
band totally exhaust themselves and all but wreck the proceedings, at least for
a viable release at the time. It sounds like they were having fun, though.
The song does sound similar to the rough and ready, good but not pol-
ished performances that make up Lennon’s contributions to
Milk and Honey.
Because those were partially done to get the performers to cohere as a band
(as opposed to a collection of musicians), perhaps this recording served much
the same purpose and explains Lennon’s long takes.
Ultimately rejected by Lennon from the
Rock ’N’ Roll
album, but included
on the
Roots
album, “Angel Baby” is one of the Spector-produced pieces
from early in the project, before the project started breaking down. Slow
without being ponderous, stacked without sounding murky, the song is one
where Spector’s production succeeds and Lennon’s vocals are earnest if a lit-
tle flightly, as if he cannot quite totally commit to them—perhaps his reason
for rejecting the song. Lennon begins his performance with a short narrative,
98 The Words and Music of John Lennon
dedicating the song to “Rosie” (Rose Hamlin of Rosie and the Originals),
who wrote and recorded the original hit version of the song in 1960. All in
all, a nice track, and arguably Lennon was being too hard on himself.
The rockabilly classic “Since My Baby Left Me” has an intriguing arrange-
ment of a call and response between Lennon and a female chorus echoing his
energetic, if erratic, vocals. It does not quite work, however, largely because
the party-like sing-along atmosphere is forced and unconvincing. Lennon’s
introductory preamble loses focus, causing the number to stumble at the
outset, and it never recovers. At one point, he forgets to pause and wait for
the “response” to his “call.” In fact, the call-and-response structure dimin-
ishes what should have been a raw vibrancy to something sputtering and
lackluster. Not awful by any means, but considering what Lennon might have
done with this in (for example) 1964, or compared to his then-recent “Tight
A$,” it is a missed opportunity.
Phil Spector’s 1958 classic “To Know Her Is To Love Her” is revamped for
Lennon, who somehow manages to give a performance that, remarkably and
successfully, seems simultaneously tongue in cheek
and
sincere. The record-
ing careens toward the overblown but stops just short with a middle section
grounded by rapid martial-sounding snare drums and Lennon’s impassioned
vocals. As do most of the Spector-produced numbers for the project, this
song suffers a bit from the slow pace but is not as hampered by that as others.
The Beatles recorded this song at the 1962 Decca audition; Lennon also sang
lead then, and a fun comparison can be made between the two.
The rest of the album is made up of rehearsals of five of the songs that
were included on
Walls and Bridges.
All are stripped down compared to their
final versions, though with the basic arrangements intact. Minus the polish
and production, the bleakness of the numbers is accented. All have varying
degrees of interest, with “Scared” coming off best. In some ways, the track
is even improved, the emotional impact sounding something like an outtake
from
Plastic Ono Band,
as others have noted. The other four songs, although
intriguing at times—such as when Lennon offers alternate lyrics for “Nobody
Loves You (When You’re Down and Out)”—remain little more than sporadi-
cally fascinating curios.
Imagine: John Lennon
A compilation of key Lennon tracks released to coincide with the bio-
graphical documentary and photo book of the same name from 1988, a dou-
ble album entitled
Imagine: John Lennon
includes Beatles recordings and two
interesting, previously unreleased tracks, a unique attribute among Lennon
compilations. The collection makes sense as a soundtrack of the film, less so
if intended as a true representative encapsulation of his career.
The first of the two previously unreleased tracks is a short performance of
“Imagine” that in the film is merely to familiarize fellow musicians with the
basics of the song. Lennon talks his way through part of it, and finishes it in
I Don’t Wanna Face It, 1981–1988 99
a mock cowboy drawl that punctures the solemnity of the piece in a comical,
though startling, way.
Like the film, the album opens with “Real Love,” an unfinished song of
Lennon’s that was later completed by the remaining Beatles as part of the
Anthology 2
set. This is a clear-sounding composing tape, done with guitar,
and does not appear to be the version that The Beatles reworked. Oddly, it
sounds better than the source material they had, and, as a matter of fact, so
do other takes of the song. Further comments can be found under the discus-
sion for The Beatles’ treatment of Lennon’s original recording.
The Lost Lennon Tapes
Radio Series
The Lost Lennon Tapes,
a syndicated radio series, proved to be alternately
enthralling and frustrating for Lennon fans and historians. A significant
amount of unaired Lennon work worth hearing was showcased along with
material that even a hardcore fan would consider to be of marginal interest. It
is important to note that a fair portion of the musical treasures broadcast has
never turned up anywhere else legally, and the show has become the source
of numerous bootleg collections and Internet downloads. All of which begs
the question of why the material still languishes in the legal vaults at such a
late date.
In 1988,
The Lost Lennon Tapes
was syndicated over the Westwood One
Radio Network and hosted by disc jockey, and friend of Ono and Lennon,
Elliot Mintz. The series began its near four-year run with a three-hour spe-
cial. The show combined Mintz’s commentary and historical accounts with
various interviews he and others had conducted with Lennon over the years.
Sanctioned by Ono and the Lennon Estate, the drawing power of the series
was its promise of rare and previously unreleased recordings of Lennon from
his earliest, even pre-Beatle, days up to the time of his slaying. These would
encompass anything of near broadcast quality, including studio outtakes,
rehearsals, live performances, jam sessions, composing tapes, home demos,
and even studio chatter. For the first half of the series’ run, it delivered.
Not surprisingly, many of the recordings that first were heard on this series
were later included in such collections as The Beatles’
Anthology, John Len-
non Anthology
and as bonus cuts on CD collections and reissues of Len-
non’s albums. Strangely, however, many others have not been legally released
decades after being broadcast and, as a result, have turned up as popular
bootlegs on the Internet and elsewhere. In fact, research shows that at least
a dozen, if not twice that, additional Lennon compositions not heard on
The
Lost Lennon Tapes
or released elsewhere have never yet been made public.
Many are assuredly home demos, largely from his mid- to late-1970s hia-
tus. Despite the amount of written coverage on Lennon and The Beatles,
it would seem that a book-length focus on his unfinished and unreleased
musical materials is in order. The remarkable fact is that it is quite possible
that two or even three hours of releasable, marketable John Lennon music
100 The Words and Music of John Lennon
awaits mass release decades after his killing. Here is a brief sampling of some
of the more notable tracks from
The Lost Lennon Tapes
that are not covered
elsewhere in this work.7
For his own pleasure or to work the kinks out of a group of musicians,
Lennon enjoyed returning to his musical roots, time and time again. For
Lennon, rock and roll wore the crown, of course, but, as mentioned, he had
absorbed the pop music of his early childhood and had been entranced by
the skiffle craze as well.
One of the most enjoyable recordings featured on the radio series was
Lennon’s performance of a medley of British Music Hall songs, with a skiffle
revival number thrown in. Lennon sets up a rolling piano riff and eagerly
tears his way through an impromptu selection of numbers, beginning with a
sea shanty. The medley is not planned through, and part of the fun is to listen
to Lennon vamp until ready at the keyboard, thinking of what song he will