My Top 100 Albums: #86 - John Lennon, ‘John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band’
86.
John Lennon, ‘John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band’
Apple Records, 1970
In September 1970, John Lennon showed up to Abbey Road studios having recently returned from Los Angeles, where he’d undergone a programme of primal scream therapy under the American psychotherapist Arthur Janov. The resulting album exhibited Lennon at his most self-reflective, most authentic, and, yes, most self-indulgent. The tracklist here covers just as much ground as I’m sure Lennon did in those five months of therapy sessions. The album opens flamboyantly with its only single - the candid and psychoanalytical Mother, in which clangourous, resonant piano chords and a deep, gated bass drum drive the music inexorably, pedal-like, towards a climax which consists of the mantra “Mama don’t go, daddy come home” devolving slowly into desperate, guttural shrieks. A gauntlet laid down early for the rest of the album to live up to, immediately confirming the influence of Janov’s primal therapy on Lennon’s first post-Beatles solo music. But the following tracks are up to the challenge. Lennon shows that he hasn’t totally abandoned his Beatles sound with the following track Hold On, with its very Beatles-like off-beat guitar groove and Lennon’s soul-influenced vocals. From here, Lennon transitions adeptly into the rhythm-and-blues, Doors-like I Found Out, with its muted, overdriven electric guitar, and then the folk, acoustic-guitar track Working Class Hero. This track is Lennon embracing hedonism - his trademark bitter irony overflowing into a truly brutal denunciation of class unconsciousness: “Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/And you think you’re so clever and classless and free/But you’re still f____ peasants as far as I can see”. Following this invective, the hypnotic bass drum returns for the enjoyable Isolation, whose irresistible chromatic piano intro leads into a ballad rich with muddy chords and shouty vocals, recorded in stereo, in which Lennon plays around with form with a typical impishness. The latter half of the album is a bit more muted, with the contemplative and somewhat saccharine Love, another rhythm and blues track with howling vocals in Well Well Well, and the very Beatlesque Look at Me, before the iconoclastic God, in which Lennon uses anaphora to reel off a list of everything he doesn’t believe in, from “yoga” to “Jesus” to, controversially, “Beatles”. God would ultimately foreshadow Lennon’s next album Imagine in terms of its style and sound, as well as the track Imagine, in regards to its lyrical content. The album is capped off with the short outro My Mummy’s Dead, featuring a purposefully muddy production - think Robert Johnson - and a simple acoustic guitar instrumental. As far as kicking off his post-Beatles career is concerned, Plastic Ono Band is an ambitious and stylistic offering that turns its head away from the Beatles towards newer pastures whilst still occasionally casting an eye over its shoulder to draw from its past experiences. Indeed, Ringo Starr provides the drum performances on this recording - a signal that Lennon wasn’t ready to reject his past just yet. Not that Lennon was not afraid to experiment here - he frequently indulges his not inconsiderable ego, but the fact that he was able to rein it in with a solid musical grounding makes this record a thoroughly enjoyable listen.
Hidden Highlight: Hold On
Mother
Hold On
I Found Out
Working Class Hero
Isolation
Remember
Love
Well Well Well
Look At Me
God
My Mummy’s Dead