Album: John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band
Release date: 11 December 1970 (US & UK)
Produced by: Phil Spector, John Lennon, Yoko Ono
Tracklist:
Mother
Hold On
I Found Out
Working Class Hero
Isolation
Remember
Love
Well Well Well
Look At Me
God
My Mummy's Dead
That album was released in December 1970. To understand it's history i'd recommend the reading of the Lennon interviews published in the same book by Jann Wenner Rolling Stone magazine Editor. It's called "Lennon Remembers" and it's worth the read.
John wanted to distance himself from the Beatles, but he wanted Ringo's help on drums, and Klaus Voorman on bass. Billy Preston played piano and Lennon piano / guitars / lead vocals ( Yoko on winds whatever that means) that band managed to record the finest Lennon solo performance. This was his first studio album.
Some of those songs could have been in a Beatles album. Some of them talk about what him and Yoko went through at that time. The result was a very touching and honest album.
The opening track, 'Mother', is beautiful , but yet so painful. Lennon wrote it while he was doing therapy along with Yoko at Arthur Janov's house; that man had just written a book call 'Primal Scream' and Lennon seems to exorcise himself in that track.
It's the first time we hear Lennon in that state, being very honest with himself and with the world. 'Hold on', the 2nd track is about him and Yoko and the pain and things they'd been through together. I like the arrangements of that one and that neat overdub in the chorus.
I found out: throughout a very raw and dry but catchy riff, Lennon empties his bag here, and demonstrates how pissed he was with stardom. A big moment of great honesty.
'Working Class Hero': John, with his golden voice and an acoustic plays those two simple chords again and again, and a beautiful tune comes out of it, spiced with very mature but sarcastic and bitter lyrics. Lennon was fed up with the system and he wanted to say it in his first real solo project... "a working class hero is something to be"....... that's exactly what he was, a very lucid working class hero.
'Isolation': yet another beautiful song that tells how him and Yoko were isolated from the outside world, and John seems to go bunker when he screams that chorus: "i don't expect you to understand/after you've caused so much pain but then again/ you're not to blame/ you're just a human/a victim of the insane".
That track closed side one of the vinyl release. 'Remember' opens side 2 with a groovy piano, his voice is crystal clear as always. The lyrics are tuned with the rest of the album. It ends abruptly by an explosion the 5th of November celebretions in the UK.
'Love': is a ballad like only him could do in such an oddly / simple way. The piano is very soothing and the song flows like a beautiful sunset.
'Well Well Well': another glimpse at this Janov's Primal Scream therapy. Again, the riff is very very very basic, and Lennon screams like a banshee.
'Look at me': i believe this one was written earlier and could have been in the white album. His voice is friendly and warm, the song is great, the guitar clear. I love it.
'God': that's when John decides to empty his bag for good before the closing; i mean he seems to try to tell us all those things that have bothered him for years. He wants to tell us that it's all over, the dream is over, and he was just a guy, the Beatles was only a myth, and all there was left for him was Yoko and him.
'My Mummy's Dead': he had to sing his trauma one last time. "I can't explain / so much pain" it's very moving, it's been his way to heal himself maybe.
From the moment we hear those bells before the opening track "Mother" till now, there was not a single filler not a single poor track. Everything is great, everything makes sense. It's like a concept album.
I think that the credits for the sound of that unique album can be attributed to Ringo (whose drum part in that album shows once and for all how great a drummer he really was) and with Klaus Voorman's Bass they made one of the most intertesting rhythm section i've ever heard. And the Spector's touch (who co-produced with John) shows that as a producer he was able to do different things than just a "wall of sound".
His influence will get stronger in John's next solo project the titanesque "Imagine" it will be different from that minimal production that was John Lennon's real solo debut, if we don't take into account the abstract stuff with Yoko. For John, that album marked the beginning of a new era. Again, his best solo in my humble opinion.
John Lennon: Vocals / Guitars / Piano
Klaus Voorman: Bass Guitar
Ringo Starr: Drums
Billy Preston: Piano
Yoko Ono: Winds
