(The Praeger Singer-Songwriter Collection) Ben Urish, Ken Bielen-The Words and Music of John Lennon-Praeger (2007) (12 page)

the prison metaphor. The excellent saxophone work of Stan Bronstein ties

the verses together, with the chorus a harmonized duet of poetic statements

from Lennon and Ono, such as “Wood becomes a flute when it’s loved.”

The verses decry the human condition of being bounded by unjust social

constrictions that literally and figuratively stifle the individual and, by exten-

sion, society itself. Not only one of the better tracks on the album, it is one

of Ono’s better tracks from this phase of her career.

“New York City” is the album’s primary rocker and probably could have been

a solid-selling single if released as such. The fast-paced song is directly autobio-

graphical and a close relative to The Beatles’ “The Ballad of John and Yoko.”

The number recounts the goings on of Lennon and Ono, such as meeting up

with countercultural figures, while commenting on their immigration problems.

To the government’s attempts to force him and Ono out, Lennon reminds the

elected officials and bureaucrats, “The Statue of Liberty said ‘come.’ ”

Both David Peel (“The Ballad of New York City [John Lennon–Yoko

Ono]”) and Elephant’s Memory (“Local Plastic Ono Band”) had songs

about Lennon and Ono on their albums contemporary with this, and Ele-

phant’s Memory had a couple of seriously rocking numbers as well, the aptly

named “Power Boogie” and “Liberation Special.” In a sense, “New York

City” combines those efforts. Elephant’s Memory boogies in solid support

of Lennon’s energetic singing, and both vocalist and band seem reluctant to

let loose of the groove. Lennon seems to relish the band’s drive and momen-

tum. He urges them on several occasions with shouts and comments. It is

easily the most enjoyable and brisk track on the album.

Gimme Some Truth, 1970–1973 41

The killing of Irish Catholic protestors by British soldiers prompted the

angry “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” Lennon’s rage is palpable, and the recording

has a suitably chaotic and rambunctious sound, but the song does not quite

succeed. The lyrics start off with some nice rhetorical spins and a modicum

of insight, but after the guitar break they lose centering and all that remains

is the anger, thus drifting into lyrical hyperbole. Lennon also inexplicably

pronounces “learn” as “loyn” in the second verse, forcing him to then pro-

nounce “turn” and “burn” in a similar fashion so that they rhyme, which

detracts from Lennon’s message. The wailing of guitar and saxophone sup-

port a mix of Ono’s emotionally appropriate vocal screeching and Lennon’s

yells and calls of “do it!” as the song begins to fade out and then returns, as

if reminding listeners that the tragedy continues even when not the focus of

attention and it will not go away on its own.

“The Luck of the Irish” is more general and more successful. A listing

of innocent Irish clichés and idyllic stereotypes in the chorus sung by Ono

is cleverly countered with the harsh contemporary political realities and

historical summations sung by Lennon in the introduction and verses. This

is all set up with the sardonic irony of the opening couplets that play off

the usually bromidic phrase of the “luck of the Irish,” indicating that any

luck the Irish have had has been bad—so bad that “you’d wish you was

English instead.”

The contrasting irony continues with a pleasant lilting rhythm and a flute

providing fills and a near countermelody in support of Lennon’s singing of

“pain and death.” Lennon continues characterizing the then-current events

as rape and genocide while singing in pleasant, soft tones. The idea of a dark

humor approach is clever, and the song, as sociopolitical polemic, succeeds.

Interestingly, at the same time as Lennon and Ono created these songs and

recordings, Lennon’s former artistic partner Paul McCartney, inspired by the

same events, wrote and recorded “Give Ireland Back to the Irish,” enjoying

a number-21 hit with it.

Lennon’s song in support of activist John Sinclair, at the time serving a 10-

year prison sentence for the sale of two marijuana cigarettes, is simply called

“John Sinclair.” Here the lyrical statements and musical statements mesh to

form a strong song that communicates its point of view and message with

directness and simplicity. Lennon asks rhetorical questions to good effect in

the lyrics, from the opening “won’t you care for John Sinclair?” to the later

“what else can the bastards do?” referring to the corrupt and unjust system

as well as particular individuals.

Lennon compares the severity of Sinclair’s crime with the reputed immoral,

unethical, and criminal actions of others and then asks, “was he jailed for

what he done, or representin’ everyone?” The flowing questions and explana-

tory statements of the lyrics stream by to the sounds of Lennon’s exemplarily

played bluesy slide guitar that rolls and tumbles the song along with urgent

tension, but no stress. “They gave him ten for two,” Lennon repeats. He then

42 The Words and Music of John Lennon

pushes to the finale with “we gotta set him free!” with the word “gotta” ear-

nestly repeated several times.

Lennon performed the song on television and at a rally to support Sinclair’s

release, and Sinclair was in fact set free less than three months after the album

came out.

A song about activist Angela Davis was far less successful. Lennon and Ono

again duet more or less equally on the vocals, and instrumentally the song

has some vibrant orchestral string work in addition to fine guitar and organ

moments. But the lyrics do not really add up to much more than generic

platitudes such as “the world watches you” before veering into unintentional

self-parody with such absurdities as “they gave you coffee, they gave you tea,

they gave you everything but equality.” The point may be that the power

structure and social institutions deal in surface niceties but not in actual sub-

stance, but neither Lennon nor Ono seem to have been particularly inspired

here.

The album ends with another strong Ono track, “We’re All Water,” the

refrain having been adapted from one of her poems. Ono describes the essen-

tial oneness of humanity by listing a series of supposed similarities between

seemingly disparate celebrities, historical figures, and locations. For instance,

her opening line indicates that there may not be much difference between

Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon if we “strip them naked,” or between

“Manson and the Pope” if we “press their smiles” in a later passage. Another

line was adapted from her book
Grapefruit,
where she suggested counting

the windows of certain buildings. Here she says there may not be much dif-

ference between the White House and the Hall of People if we count their

windows.

The refrain happily states, “we’re all water” and that someday “we’ll evap-

orate together.” The band keeps the staccato beat going as Ono engages in

her familiar vocal escalations while asking, “what’s the difference?” and soon

replying, “there’s no difference!” The track is one of the better transferences

of her conceptual art instructions into song lyrics, and the high-energy per-

formance of the band adds immensely to the appeal of her playful yet serious

lyrics and delivery.

Live Jam

The original issue of
Sometime in New York City
included a bonus disc

entitled
Live Jam
. The first three numbers are from the aptly named Plas-

tic Ono Supergroup (including George Harrison) for the live show from

December 1969.

The first numbers performed are “Cold Turkey” and “Don’t Worry

Kyoko.” Although released only three months after the debut of both at the

Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival, the readings are noticeably different.

“Cold Turkey” now has the raw intensity of the single release, and the band’s

Gimme Some Truth, 1970–1973 43

performance builds the tension the song needs rather than lilting along as it

did in the Toronto show. Ono’s number is a stunning masterwork complete

with her vocals bouncing through a call and response with the horn section

and a hyped-up finale that even Ono has trouble sustaining.

The remainder of the
Live Jam
album is taken from a 1971 guest appear-

ance the couple did at the Fillmore East with Frank Zappa and the Mothers

of Invention. Lennon is featured on an old rhythm and blues number, “Well

(Baby Please Don’t Go).” Considering the few live appearances Lennon

made, this performance is a real gem. Lennon must have liked it, because he

recorded this song during his
Imagine
sessions a few months later, though it

was not released until the
John Lennon Anthology
collection in 1998. The live

version is a strong and welcome vocal performance with full-throttle support

from Zappa on guitar and the Mothers.

The rest of the album consists of a lengthy jam featuring Ono. The jam

loses momentum at some points but manages to recover and contains some

good work from all three principals. The nature of the jam made it possible

for Lennon to divide the performance into different numbers, although it is

not always clear why the divisions occur where they do. Two decades later,

Zappa released his own version on the double CD set
Playground Psychotics.

The differences in song divisions may be minor, but Zappa’s mix is superior

in sound quality and in the intuitive sense of where the jam changes. Perhaps

Ono was tacitly acknowledging this when she remixed and remastered the

Sometime in New York City
album for CD release in 2005 and omitted the

jam entirely, replacing it with the holiday single of “Happy Xmas (War Is

Over)” / “Listen, The Snow Is Falling.” The omission means that the only

available digital version of that portion of the concert is Zappa’s.

the elePhant’s memory Band:
eLePhant’s memorY

Lennon and Ono produced and played on this album for their backing

band. Lennon is on 6 of the 10 cuts, playing guitar and singing on 2 cuts,

playing electric piano on 1, and adding vocals to 3 others. Ono vocalizes on

4 of the cuts with Lennon.

Lennon historian John Robertson relates that Lennon worked on compos-

ing but then abandoned a song about classic rockers Chuck Berry and Bo

Diddley.15 Abandoned or not, just such a song titled “Chuck ’n’ Bo” closes

the first side of the album. Perhaps Lennon was running through this number

just for the fun of it and Robertson or his sources thought it was an aban-

doned composition of Lennon’s. In any event, it pastiches the famous charac-

teristic musical riffs and rhythms of the two men and tells an amusing story of

a concert situation in which Diddley and Berry demonstrate the invigorating

freedom of rock and roll music, a concept close to Lennon’s heart. In the

midst of the political turmoil of Lennon’s activities in 1972, it is interest-

ing to speculate that he might have contributed to this semi-nostalgic rocker

44 The Words and Music of John Lennon

that touts the liberation of the musical form itself, with no overt messages or

specific slogans. Both Berry and Diddley were at the 1969 Toronto Rock and

Roll Revival Festival, so perhaps the song was inspired by something Lennon

observed there, though he receives no songwriting credit for the song.

Both “Liberation Special” and “Power Boogie” are solid rockers, with

Lennon adding to the drive of “Power Boogie.” Each is also somewhat remi-

niscent of Lennon’s “New York City.” In addition, Lennon’s electric piano

contributions to “Wind Ridge” are quite appropriate and fill out the song

with real flourish. The album ends with a droll number called “Local Plastic

Ono Band,” in which Elephant’s Memory good-naturedly jokes about their

status as Lennon and Ono’s backup group. The lyrics playfully imply that the

notoriety may be both helpful and a hindrance to their career.

aPProximateLY inFinite Universe

Ono helped to open Lennon to more experimental composing and to

thinking more seriously of himself as an artist with a particular role in society.

And at the same time, his influence had been prompting her to make more

forays into conventional pop music songwriting. As the year closed, Ono and

Lennon worked on and completed this double album set of pop songs, Ono

style, with Elephant’s Memory backing her up as they had done on Lennon

and Ono’s
Sometime in New York City.

Lennon co-produced the album with Ono and can be heard both vocally

and instrumentally on many of the tracks. His genuinely exuberant happy

cheering on “What a Mess” and his vocal fills on “I Wish I Knew” are wel-

come additions to those numbers, but his most significant vocal contribution

to the album is on Ono’s remarkable and plaintive song of female forgiveness

and understanding for the sins of male sexism, “I Want My Love To Rest

Tonight.” Late in the song it features backing and harmony vocals by Len-