(The Praeger Singer-Songwriter Collection) Ben Urish, Ken Bielen-The Words and Music of John Lennon-Praeger (2007) (10 page)

Beatle. In the first verse, Lennon states, “Those freaks was right” when rumors

abounded that Paul “was dead.” The leader of The Beatles suggests that the

“Paul is dead” rumors were prophetic. As far as Lennon is concerned, musi-

cally and artistically McCartney is deceased.

Lennon’s lyrics also describe McCartney’s marriage relationship with

Linda Eastman. He suggests that McCartney “jump[s]” at the moment his

“momma” speaks—an ironic comment in view of his own reactions to criti-

cisms of his relationship with Ono. Finally, Lennon, in frustration, wonders

how, after their long songwriting and musical partnership, McCartney’s work

reveals no evidence that he “learned something.” To Lennon, the collabora-

tions were for naught.

In a song that hearkens back to the thoughts Lennon wrestled with on

his previous album,
Plastic Ono Band,
“How?” focuses on three personal

subjects. In a song full of questions, Lennon asks about moving ahead with

one’s life; the place of feelings; and offering love. This is a song about self-

doubt, as Lennon sings about his uncertainties regarding love and life. Early

in the song, Lennon lists personal issues regarding his emotional, mental, and

spiritual state of being and consciousness.

In the first verse, which asks about moving forward, Lennon speaks of

the insecurity that comes with taking risks or stepping out. In the second

verse, he suggests that he does not know how to get in touch with his feel-

ings because he does not “know how to feel.” Sadly, he confesses, this is

because “my feelings have always been denied.” “How can I give love,” he

asks, “when love is something I ain’t never had?” As noted earlier, his father

abandoned Lennon for the sea, and his mother was tragically killed during

the singer’s teenage years.

In the chorus, repeated twice in the recorded performance, Lennon sug-

gests that he has the choice of either facing adversity or giving up. The chorus

does not provide an answer to the song’s titular query. It merely states that

life is sometimes tough and that we must carry on somehow. Perhaps there

are no answers to the “how?” questions. The final verse is a mirror image of

the first, except that Lennon expands its purview from his individual concern

to the corporate “we.” As in “Hold On” and “Isolation” from the
Plastic

Ono Band
album, he expands the embrace of his lyric beyond himself and his

situation to that of the world at large. We all have similar issues. That is part

of what makes us one.

Gimme Some Truth, 1970–1973 33

“Oh Yoko!” is an unabashed paean of love and devotion to Lennon’s soul

mate, Yoko Ono, gleefully parading to a near manic conclusion. Rolling piano

and jangling rhythm provide the effervescent atmosphere that permeates the

cut. The chorus stretches out the words “My love will turn you on” as if the

joy cannot be contained in a normal-paced rhythm. A brief harmonica solo

is so peppy it almost loses control, prefiguring the end of the song, when it

does. The band fades out and the harmonica continues playing frantically in

its happy abandon.

The words are a catalog of locations and situations implying the omnipres-

ence of Ono, either literally or figuratively in the singer’s heart. Lennon’s

later song “Dear Yoko” from
Double Fantasy
in 1980 reversed the omnipres-

ence of Ono, discussing how much her absence was felt. No matter where

he is, in a bath, in front of the mirror, in a dream, or in a cloud, his thoughts

turn to his wife. Five times he repeats the phrase “I call your name,” attesting

to the power of voicing a name aloud (as noted in certain spiritual teachings),

as well as reflecting the title of the Beatlemania era song he wrote called “I

Call Your Name.” The song underscores the premise of the British group

The Troggs’ hit from three years earlier, “Love Is All Around.”

The track’s infectious character and unabashed silliness in comparison

to most of Lennon’s generally serious, frequently solemn, and sometimes

dour output of the prior two years made it surprisingly popular, especially in

the face of the incessant Ono-bashing that plagued the couple. Lennon was

encouraged to release the song as a single but declined.9

Lennon was successful in his attempt to create an album of artistic achieve-

ment and expression that would also appeal to large audiences, and
Imagine

was a commercial and critical success. The mistiming of his next single, and

his move toward radical activism and overt issue-oriented songs in the next

year, would dissipate the efforts he had made at solidifying his popularity

after The Beatles’ breakup. While Lennon was always creating interesting

music and lyrics, they were not always well received by the public or by the

critical establishment, as the next year would demonstrate.

“haPPy Xmas (war is over)”

Counting “God Save Us,” Lennon had already released three singles in

1971. Motivated by a similar desire to create a new holiday standard as he

had tried to create a new protest standard in “Give Peace a Chance,” Lennon

came up with his fourth single of the year. His timing was a bit off, however,

and the single, originally on holiday-appropriate green vinyl, was released

too late in the season and as a result failed to chart.10 “Happy Xmas (War Is

Over)” did become a hit the next year in the United Kingdom, and again

charted after his homicide.11 Although not the standard Lennon hoped it

might become, the song does turn up regularly in the holiday season’s musi-

cal mix. It would be his last single that did not come from an album released

34 The Words and Music of John Lennon

during his lifetime, though the flip side of 1975s “Stand by Me” from the

Rock ’N’ Roll
album, titled “Move over Ms. L,” was also a nonalbum cut.

The song combines elements of Lennon’s previous singles. The “war

is over if you want it” backing chant is reminiscent of both “Give Peace a

Chance” and a combination of “We all shine on” from “Instant Karma!” and

the titular refrain from “Power to the People.” And, like the lyrics to “Instant

Karma!” Lennon both prods and challenges listeners before providing reas-

surance. His testy opening statement, “So this is Christmas, and what have

you done?” is soon followed by Ono leading a chorus singing the slightly

disconcerting “A very merry Christmas and a happy New Year, let’s hope it’s

a good one without any fear.” The next verse follows the pattern by remind-

ing listeners of how it is Christmas for both weak and strong, rich and poor,

black and white, yellow and red—while urging us to recall that, for many,

“the road is so long” and for all to “stop all the fights.”

The emotion in Lennon’s voice almost becomes pleading and the chorus

swells and, as in George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord,” the infectious chant

soon has listeners singing along almost unaware of what they are saying, be

it “Hare Rama” or “war is over.” As the chorus shouts multiple rounds of

“Happy Christmas,” Lennon ends the song with everyone cheerfully applaud-

ing as he had ended “Give Peace a Chance.” This loud communal response at

the finish is the opposite of how the track begins with both Lennon and Ono

whispering a personal message to their children Julian and Kyoko. Further, it

parallels the song’s message of expanding the sense of family celebration the

holiday engenders to include not only a concern for the state of humanity,

but a call to do something about that concern in the coming year.

The B-side is an engagingly simple work by Ono named “Listen, The

Snow Is Falling.” The song begins with the crunching sound of a person

walking through snow as the wind whistles by. Sleigh bells are heard as Ono

sings of several places being covered by the falling snow, beginning with

physical locations such as “between Trafalgar Square” and moving to poetic

locations such as “your head and my mind” before returning to the physical

again. Descending sounds replicate the falling of the snow, countered by a

gently ascending guitar riff. Later in the piece, a few measures sound similar

to Lennon’s work on The Beatles’ “Sun King” from the
Abbey Road
album

before the song returns to the sound of footsteps, wind, and Ono’s urgent

whispering of “listen!” as the song fades out. It is one of her best conven-

tional recordings and indicates her early abilities to skillfully fuse her poetic

and conceptual imagery with the format of mainstream pop songs, a talent

she would continue to develop with increasing success.

FLY

Lennon also worked on Ono’s next album, a two-record set called
Fly.
It

contains some of the duo’s experimental music, including works for their

Gimme Some Truth, 1970–1973 35

films’ soundtracks, more or less making up one disc, and a series of tracks

similar to those on Ono’s
Plastic Ono Band
album on the second disc. At

least two tracks include essential work from Lennon, and both were flip sides

to his earlier singles.

As discussed previously, “Open Your Box” (also known as “Hirake”)

was the original B-side for “Power to the People.” The track was banned

from radio broadcast for the supposedly suggestive lyrics “open your legs ...

open your box” whereas the intent was ultimately to open people’s hearts

and minds. The song was remixed for reissue in the United Kingdom and

replaced on the B-side of the “Power to the People” single by “Touch Me”

for its U.S. release. Moderately paced and with a chugging, splintery rhythm,

“Open Your Box” looks forward to the similar though smoother sounds Ono

and Lennon would employ on future numbers, even as late as the work for

Double Fantasy.
In a joke, Ono has “Toilet Piece”—the sound of a flushing

toilet—follow the abrupt end of the track.

The standout inclusion on
Fly,
however, is “Don’t Worry Kyoko,” finally

on an album over a year after its release as the B-side to “Cold Turkey.” The

guitars of Lennon and Eric Clapton alternate between a lilting semi-slide and

sniping bites while the slowly varying drum work of Starr keeps the underly-

ing tension mounting. Ono’s vocal line is one of her most effective, and the

recording is still an amazing achievement decades later.

“Midsummer New York,” both musically and in Ono’s vocal interpretation,

is a rocking Elvis Presley parody, although lyrically it describes the physical

and psychological effects of a nightmarish panic attack. The song also shows

that Ono was absorbing Lennon’s lessons in the school of rock as readily as

he was absorbing her schooling in the avant-garde. The ironic ballad “Mrs.

Lennon” also has an intriguing counterpoint between its lyrics of anxiousness

at Ono losing her identity in Lennon’s shadow and the overall plaintive love-

song sound of the track, which is helped considerably by Lennon’s simple

and evocative faux classical piano playing.

Of interest is that one of the engineers on this album, Jack Douglas, who

would help engineer David Peel’s
The Pope Smokes Dope
(also produced by

Lennon and Ono), later became the co-producer with Lennon and Ono for

the recording sessions that produced the
Double Fantasy
album, as well as

Ono’s “Walking on Thin Ice” single and Lennon’s unfinished cuts from the

Milk and Honey
album.

david Peel:
the PoPe smokes doPe

Late in 1971, Lennon and Ono took up residence in New York. Their

previous activities had introduced them to various counterculture and under-

ground personalities, and this continued and intensified. One such person

they met was activist and street musician David Peel. Lennon was impressed

with Peel’s sense of melody and his folksy sing-along approach to protest

36 The Words and Music of John Lennon

message songs. It probably helped that Peel had a strong sense of the absurd

that found humorous expression in most of his work. Lennon and Ono were

enthralled enough to produce and appear on an album for Peel called
The

Pope Smokes Dope
—but the depth of their direct artistic input is not clear, and

it may have been minimal.

As with Lennon’s other work from this time, both the strengths and the

weaknesses of this album relate to it being a bit of a time capsule, as titles

such as “Everybody’s Smoking Marijuana” and “Chicago Conspiracy” dem-

onstrate. The songs on the album are sonically blended, sometimes musically,

but often with the sounds of a crowd applauding and reacting to the perfor-

mance. The attempt is to capture the urgent energy and immediacy of the

street performance experience, and it largely succeeds.

The album also exhibits a free-spirited sense of fun, with Peel’s off-kilter

and earthy humor in full evidence, notably on the title song that is introduced

with some audio-vérité from a Lennon interview. Peel’s absurd humor and