(The Praeger Singer-Songwriter Collection) Ben Urish, Ken Bielen-The Words and Music of John Lennon-Praeger (2007) (16 page)

meaning since it implies a sexual component that never materializes in the

song, thereby presenting another Lennon joke as both the romance and

sexual liaison are denied.

Though lyrically bleak, the song glides between a leisurely pace with flow-

ing horn work and some jumpy funk rhythms with bongos and tight, sputter-

ing horns. The contrast provides a feeling of nervous energy, appropriate to

the anxious but somehow resigned mood. Lennon quotes his past work and

that of others throughout the album, and on this song he quotes his classic

Beatles recording “Help!” In the same melody as that song, but at a slower

pace, Lennon sings “Somebody please, please help me” very much as he had

in the earlier recording.

Elton John’s vocals are so prevalent on “Whatever Gets You through

the Night” that it almost feels like cheating to call this Lennon’s first solo

number-one single since the demise of The Beatles. Lennon continues the

clever musical and lyrical echoing and borrowing that permeate this album by

copying himself again. The melody that accompanies the title line is the same

as the opening of the line to
Imagine
’s “Jealous Guy,” as Lennon himself

recognizes in a composing tape included in the
John Lennon Anthology.
A

lengthier version of the rehearsal appeared on
The Lost Lennon Tapes.

“Whatever Gets You through the Night” is a jovial, high-energy rocker

that keeps moving from verse to chorus with a rollicking saxophone solo line

and handclaps. Elton John’s keyboard work underpins the track, sounding in

the same vein as his keyboard playing on his own energetic hit single “Honky

58 The Words and Music of John Lennon

Cat” from two years earlier. Lennon can be heard, though not always under-

stood, happily making comments in the midst of the instrumental passages,

including an opening remark that sounds vaguely like he is jokingly swear-

ing, though it is really unintelligible. At other points he shouts “hear me

woman!” and “take it easy, woman!” which are more discernable and make

sense in connection to the lyrics.

The lyrics are somewhat comically aphoristic, with such phrases as “don’t

need a watch to waste your time” and “don’t need a gun to blow your mind”

while more poetic and Ono-like is the statement “don’t need a sword to cut

through flowers.” The song’s chorus is one of pleading assurance, asking

for trust and proclaiming “I won’t do you no harm,” thus serving as an

excellent outgrowth of the verses’ confident fortune-cookie affirmations.

Positive, infectious, and rocking all the way, the recording restored Lennon’s

pop magic and helped propel the album to number one.

A writing collaboration with Harry Nilsson produced “Old Dirt Road,”

and Nilsson is credited vocally on the recording but is indistinguishable. He

later recorded his own version. Mournful and relaxed, the song has a slight

country and western feel, but it is not emphasized much and retains much of

a generic ballad feel. The slight song is all tone and mood, with lyrics that do

not make much literal sense but somehow sound right on an intuitive level.

The road is seen as a temporary anchor in a world where things are in a

state of indeterminate flux; a place where life is like “trying to shovel smoke

with a pitchfork in the wind,” a line reputedly provided by Nilsson. Even the

road is in danger of being covered by a mudslide, and all we can do is “keep

on keepin’ on” despite life’s vagaries. On this cut, Lennon quotes from the

song “Cool Water.” A traveler on the old dirt road encounters a person “lazy

bonin’,” who says the only thing needed is “cool, clear, water” just as it is

sung in the perennial country and western/folk favorite, which was a hit for

The Sons of the Pioneers in 1947–1948.

Opening up with an odd, warped-sounding count of “one,” echoing

Lennon’s shout of “Nine!” from his previous album, “What You Got” is

a solid, mid-paced, blues-tinged rocker with more than a little Latin funk

thrown in for good measure. Lennon takes the old saying “you don’t know

what you have until you lose it” as the core and tosses a few other standard say-

ings into the lyrics. The result is that the clichés take on an air of desperation;

the singer is trying to convince himself and find solace, however temporary,

in those old sayings. The clichés alternate between the self-recrimination of

the title and self-reassurance such as “you gotta hang on in.” The taut rush

of the song implies that the singer is trying to run away from himself and is

supported by the line “I’ve just got to run away” before he shouts “it’s such

a drag to face another day.”

One chorus quotes Little Richard’s “Rip It Up” with “Well, it’s Saturday

night and I just gotta rip it up.” Here it is not a call for exuberant celebration,

but a statement of hopeless anxiety, with the singer not knowing what else to

What You Got, 1973–1975 59

do or where to turn. “Give me one more chance,” he screams, as the energy

of the song propels the plea forward, but it remains unanswered.

The emotional panic gives way to recognition and resignation in “Bless

You,” one of Lennon’s strongest and most unique love songs. A rippling elec-

tric piano and gently cascading melody provide a floating effect to the slightly

jazzy music. The singer blesses the loved one, “wherever you are” and calls

the separated couple “restless spirits” that are still “in each other’s heart.” The

refrain reaffirms that the relationship may be repaired and continue because

outsiders do not comprehend the depth of the couple’s connection.

The second verse blesses the new lover of the beloved “whoever you are,”

and asks for the new lover to be “warm and kind hearted” while warning that

the old love will remain “now and forever.” There is no return to the chorus,

and the song bubbles along for a few bars before ending on a slightly ominous-

sounding chord, giving the song a final feeling of disquiet and unease in place

of the hopeful outlook expressed by the chorus after the first verse.

Lennon’s vocal performance is at once weary and earnest without being

cloying or overly dramatic. He wonderfully conveys the sense of having all

but given up, only holding out hope for reconciliation in the chorus. The

song’s second verse is not the sort of thing often heard in any genre of music,

and lifts the song out of the very good into the extraordinary. The song

could easily slip into the maudlin, but the tone is exemplary with a grand

fusion of effervescent instrumentals, yearning lyrics, and an emotionally real

performance.

The uneasy ending of “Bless You” leads into the mournful howling of a

wolf that opens “Scared.” The guitar picks up the howling sound and turns it

into a bending counterpoint that continues throughout the recording. Strip

the track of its production consisting of layered horns and the wolf howl

guitar, and its harrowing core is as brutal as anything on
John Lennon/Plastic

Ono Band.
But with those instruments in the mix, they paint the picture of a

confusing emotional maelstrom rather than exposed pain.

The simple admission “I’m scared, so scared” is soon explained. Life is

“what it is” and must be dealt with, but the price may be too high because

what little he has gained continues to “slip away.” “Scared” turns into

“scarred” for the second verse, where all Lennon says he has been able to do

is “manage to survive.” The frustration is all self-directed as Lennon sings

about his shortcomings. He will “sing out about love and peace” but he will

not face the “red raw meat” of his hatred and jealousy.

The last verse declares “I’m tired,” qualifying it with “tired of being alone

with no place to call my own.” But the feeling is much closer to one of existential

angst, being scared of the present and future, scarred by the past, and tired of

life’s battles. The trudging rhythm continues as the song fades out, implying

that the battles will continue.

Lennon’s second single release from the album, “#9 Dream,” was a languorous

account of a dream state, sharing something with his previous songs “I’m Only

60 The Words and Music of John Lennon

Sleeping” and “I’m So Tired” from his Beatles years. Sonically it bears some

closeness to “I Am the Walrus” as well. Built around the melody of the orches-

tration used for “Many Rivers to Cross” on the Harry Nilsson
Pussy Cats
album

produced by Lennon, and actually inspired by a dream, the song has an airy

majesty that is hard to define other than to say it is dreamlike fantasy.

A few bars of the opening guitar work, like other moments from Jesse

“Ed” Davis on this album, are graceful and reminiscent of George Harrison—

intentionally, according to some sources.7 Perhaps sleep and dreams are

respites from the pains expressed in “Scared.” Lennon sings of “magic in the

air,” and that accurately describes the orchestration’s otherworldly sound

here. Lennon’s vocals are appropriately hushed and tentative, even ask-

ing whether it was “just a dream” after all before surrendering the effort

to understand with relaxed acceptance. Lennon sings of “heat whispered

trees,” “a river of sound,” and other images worthy of “Lucy in the Sky

with Diamonds” before the chorus of the perplexing but somehow reassur-

ing “Ah, bawakawa pousse pousse” first interrupts and then later finalizes the

reveries. This connects with Lennon’s earlier blending of gibberish and real

non-English language words in The Beatles song “Sun King” from
Abbey

Road
in 1969.

Twice in the song, Lennon’s vocal intensity builds (“hear—hear—hear”

and “feel—feel—feel”) and then lets the tension evaporate into the chorus.

This is followed by a break in the rhythm as if the dreamer almost awoke

before falling back into the dream state. Lennon’s lover at the time, May

Pang, can be heard whispering “John” when he sings that he heard some-

body calling his name in the dream. Later she can be heard saying his name

backward, whereas some have said she is saying “Hare Krishna, George”

on behalf of John to George Harrison.8 It sounds like “nhoJ” to the hearer

though. With the remastered CD release in 2005, some fans accused Ono of

replacing Pang’s voice with her own but there seems to be no evidence for

the accusation; it might stem from the promotion film made for DVD release

in which Ono’s image is present at that point in the song, not Pang’s.9 The

single was a top-10 follow-up to “Whatever Gets You through the Night,”

peaking, as it surely had to, at number 9.

The shock of new love is the topic of “Surprise Surprise (Sweet Bird

of Paradox),” a song reportedly written in praise of Lennon’s off-and-on

lover for the last seven years of his life, May Pang. This is not the dawning

realization that love was meant to be as in
Mind Games
’ “Out the Blue,” but

sudden astonishment at self-centered lust (“She makes me sweat and forget

who I am”) giving way to love (“I need her,” “I love her”).

The pleasure of the realization is expressed in the jubilant and near-fractured

structure of the lyrics as well as the buoyant music. Lennon uses marginally

connected phrases to approximate the excitement that causes the thoughts

to leap ahead of themselves, and their expression to be disrupted as a result.

“Natural high ... butterfly,” he says, trying to describe his feelings, and later

What You Got, 1973–1975 61

“just like a willow tree ... a breath of spring.” “A bird of paradise,” he puns,

followed by “sunrise in her eyes.”

When he sings, “I need her,” he sounds surprised at the realization, won-

dering how long his feelings and/or the relationship can go on. Finally, he

crosses into the manic repeating of “I love her” in a higher and higher pitch

until he is in falsetto shouting “Sweet-sweet, sweet-sweet love!” over and

over as the song fades. This is another joke and borrowing from his past, as

the phrase follows the melody and rhythm of “Beep-beep, beep-beep, yeah!”

from the ending of The Beatles’ “Drive My Car.” The song is primarily

McCartney’s composition, but Lennon made contributions to the song, so it

is not clear whether he is quoting himself or his former Beatle collaborator.

From the manic, the album shifts to the poisonous rage of “Steel and

Glass,” a companion to “How Do You Sleep?” from
Imagine.
Both songs

attack someone Lennon depended on and felt betrayed by—McCartney in

the earlier track and The Beatles’ and Lennon’s one-time manager Allen

Klein in “Steel and Glass.” Neither man is named directly, but the clues are

not difficult to follow if one is familiar with Lennon’s history. The songs

are similar in tone and structure, even to some degree in arrangement with

strident strings stretching over choppy horns on the later track instead of