(The Praeger Singer-Songwriter Collection) Ben Urish, Ken Bielen-The Words and Music of John Lennon-Praeger (2007) (19 page)

love because the last time he saw her she was “wearing a man’s clothes.”

He declares that he is not prejudiced but that he “had problems with the

zipper.” Or at least that is what it sounds like he’s saying. After that, he tells

us “there’s two basses in this, an’ I hope you appreciate it.”

Outtakes of Spector versions of this are painful to listen to, as Lennon

drunkenly fumes and sputters his way through the song out of tune, missing

entrances, and spouting profanities. On the 2004 CD reissue, Ono includes

a snippet of one of these performances where Lennon says hello to his former

Beatle band mates.

And so the marginally frustrating album ends. The overly thick and some-

times ponderous production gets in the way of the spirited performances

enough times to keep this from being the superb album fans expected. But

more than half the tracks hold up well enough to make it enjoyable, if all the

more frustrating for the remainder that do not quite live up to their promise.

Considering the circumstances of its creation, the fact that the album was

not totally abandoned or sapped of all drive is something of an achievement

in itself.

Also included on the 2004 CD reissue are versions of “Angel Baby,”

“To Know Her Is To Love Her,” and “Since My Baby Left Me”—but not

70 The Words and Music of John Lennon

“Be My Baby,” thus oddly keeping the CD from being complete by not

encompassing all of the legally released
Rock
’
N
’
Roll/Roots
tracks. The first

two songs are the same as on
Menlove Ave.
(all three are discussed in chapter

6 in the section about that album), but “Since My Baby Left Me” is not the

same take, running almost a minute longer. Lennon’s performance is more

assured on this version, but the chorus is less controlled with the harmonies

and “response” to Lennon’s “call” faltering quite a few times.

David Bowie: “Across the Universe” and “Fame”

Riding high on the success of
Walls and Bridges
and having completed

the revived
Rock ’N’ Roll
sessions, Lennon accepted an offer from David

Bowie to join him to work on a cover version of Lennon’s comparatively (and

unjustly) obscure (at the time) Beatles track “Across the Universe.” Bowie

drops the “Jai Guru Deva Om” part of the refrain and overdubs himself in

a typically histrionic performance as Lennon adds some restrained guitar.

The sessions took place while Lennon’s collaboration with Elton John on his

Beatles classic “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was topping the charts.

During a rehearsal jam, the duo, with guitarist Carlos Alomar (who later

sang in the chorus for Lennon and Ono’s
Milk and Honey
album), eventually

developed the song “Fame,” which became a number-one hit for Bowie in the

summer of 1975. A semi-funk riff percolates throughout the song and bears

similarities to Lennon’s work with Ono in late 1972 and early 1973 (such as

“She Hits Back”) while looking ahead to sounds employed on various tracks

of
Double Fantasy.
Guitarist Earl Slick is on the cut, and he became one of the

guitarists for Lennon and Ono’s
Double Fantasy
album sessions.

The lyrics describe several vagaries associated with fame—some serious,

some mocking, and some absurd. The title is shouted out at various inter-

vals, with the tone usually bent, overlapping, and echoed until finally its

speed is distorted in a downward-toned cascade. It might be Lennon’s voice

that can barely be picked out of the mix on a couple of the shouted “is it

any wonder?” moments, but with the inclusion of other voices (including

Fanny co-founder and bassist Jean Millington) and electronic alterations, it is

impossible to discern his other recorded contributions. The best guess is that

Lennon contributed some of the higher-pitched vocal sounds.

5

Cleanup Time, 1975–1980

By the beginning of summer 1975 Lennon was allowing his career to wind

down. Over the next year he signed no new recording contracts and all but

stopped giving interviews. His wife was pregnant; he either had met his per-

forming and recording obligations or had specific plans in the works to do so;

his public appearances became fewer and fewer; and, at long last, his immigra-

tion struggles were beginning to break in his favor. His second child, another

son, was born in October 1975, and he was granted permanent residency

status in July 1976.

For the next four years, Lennon was mostly out of the public eye. Lennon

(and, for that matter, Ono) produced nothing professionally during this

time. After his shooting, posthumous releases of home recordings and writ-

ings evidenced that Lennon sporadically composed songs, recorded himself

for his own amusement, and concocted surreal and comic sound collages

and narratives during this period. This runs counter to interviews he gave

during the last months of his life, in which he declared he did not so much as

touch his guitar for five years.1 Despite his remarks to the contrary, Lennon

did compose and polish new material during his self-imposed professional

exile. Some of the songs were finished, and others were not. A few were

cannibalized for other compositions and the remaining shells abandoned.

Perhaps he meant his remarks to be taken in a purely professional capacity.

In any event, some (but not all) of the more superior recordings he made

during these years were included in
The Lost Lennon Tapes
radio series and

have been issued on CD.

In a 1977 interview in Japan, Lennon confirmed that he was taking time off

until his son Sean was about five years old, at which point he was considering

72 The Words and Music of John Lennon

returning in some capacity to the public eye.2 That proved to be the case, for

in late summer 1980, Lennon began recording polished demos of new mate-

rial and some of the songs he had been toying with over the last five years.

Ono joined in, and by August they were in a professional studio, making

what would become the
Double Fantasy
album.

Shaved FiSh

October 1975 saw Lennon’s 35th birthday coinciding with the birth of

his second son and the only release of a “greatest hits” album collection

that Lennon himself compiled. It is credited to “John Lennon: Plastic Ono

Band.” The collection is somewhat inexplicably titled
Shaved Fish,
which is

perhaps intended to comment on the “commercial product” as implied by

the artwork on the back of the album cover, which depicts a partially opened

tin of fish on shaved ice. The front cover is equally intriguing, with sketches

to convey the meaning of each of the songs included.

The strength of the collection resides in the fact that, at the time of release,

it was the only collection of Lennon’s nonalbum singles as well as his con-

troversial singles that had smaller sales. All of Lennon’s album singles up

to that time, with the exception of “Stand by Me,” are included. Lennon

eschews strict chronological order and bookends the collection with differ-

ent (though both incomplete) performances of “Give Peace a Chance.” He

begins the record with the first minute of the single and ends the collection

with a chorus sequence from the performance at the One to One concert. In

later interviews, Lennon said he wanted to be sure the lesser-selling singles

were not forgotten and properly archived, and the best way to ensure that

was to produce this album.3 There would not be another Lennon album for

five years.

A FinAl CollAborAtion: ringo StArr’S

“Cookin’ (in the kitChen oF love)”

Once again Starr called and Lennon answered. An April 1976 session to

record “Cookin’ (In the Kitchen of Love)” was Lennon’s first time in a pro-

fessional recording studio since his collaboration with David Bowie in Janu-

ary 1975 and would be Lennon’s last until the
Double Fantasy
sessions began

in August 1980. The resulting song is a slight, innocuous rock-pop tune that

harmlessly bounces along to its somewhat forced party atmosphere conclu-

sion. Ono later incorporated the song into the musical play about Lennon’s

life that she mounted in 2004 to 2005.

In 1980, Lennon again came to Starr’s aid as Starr began preparations

for what would be his
Stop and Smell the Roses
album of 1981. Lennon was

reportedly turning a handful of his incomplete compositions into possible

numbers for Starr, including “I’m Stepping Out” and a song called “Life

Cleanup Time, 1975–1980 73

Begins at 40.”4 Only home demos of the latter song exist because Lennon

never recorded a studio version of the song. Some accounts contend that it,

like “I’m the Greatest,” would be another Billy Shears song, while Internet

rumors indicated that it might have been under consideration for completion

by the surviving Beatles for the mid-1990s
Anthology
collection.5

PreSent in AbSentiA

Lennon may not have been producing any new recordings for public con-

sumption, but that did not mean he was totally out of the public or industry

consciousness by a long shot. Every time a former Beatle released an album,

Lennon was mentioned, and his and George Harrison’s lack of new material

was regularly addressed in trade journals and fan magazines. Harrison had a

more than two-year gap between albums, having released nothing between

Thirty Three & 1/3
in November 1976 and
George Harrison
in February

1979. During the dry period of no albums of new material from Lennon

from February 1975 to October 1980, McCartney released five albums,

Starr three, and Harrison three even with his hiatus. So, approximately

every six months, there was a new album release, and the resulting public-

ity, from a former Beatle. In addition, repackaged Beatles materials were

released with regularity, and even “new” Beatles material kept Lennon, to

some degree at least, in the public eye, if inadvertently. Although an analysis

is beyond the purview of this work, the Beatles’ releases bear mentioning

in that context.

The repackaging of Beatles materials was indeed fairly common, but the

release of legal, previously unheard material was rare. In 1977, two different

collections of The Beatles performing live were released. The first was argu-

ably the more interesting, because the recording predated their complete rise

to fame but postdated Ringo Starr’s entry into the band. It was
The Beatles

Live! At the Star Club.
The sound quality was poor, but the release included

several songs never otherwise recorded by the Beatles, and it is fascinating to

hear them. Lennon jokes with and taunts the audience and is in fine form on

several numbers.

Live at the Hollywood Bowl
came out a few months later and was an album

culled from the group’s performances at that famous venue in 1964 and

1965 by their producer George Martin and made to sound like one show.

The screams of Beatlemania take a while to get used to, but eventually the

band can be enjoyed. Lennon’s humorous remarks are part of the album’s

highlights, and it is certainly an auditory time capsule of historic interest in

addition to fun listening. It has not been issued on CD, and arguably another

blending of the concerts should be attempted for a proper CD release.

The next year saw EMI release a box set of The Beatles’ entire catalog

with a bonus album of, and called,
Rarities.
The album was then released in

1979 on its own but exists in two very different versions. The British version

74 The Words and Music of John Lennon

consists of obscure Beatle B-sides and singles that never made it on to any

album collection. Even by the late 1970s, there were still several such tracks

in the group’s catalog. Releasing “new” material was complicated because

different countries had released different collections of these recordings, so

some were available on an album in some nations but not in others. There was

no universally consistent release of this material. It was not until 1988 that

official album releases of all of this material finally came out as two albums

with the punning titles of
Past Masters
Volumes One and Two.

The
Rarities
album released in the United States was rather more esoteric.

This was not an album of missing B-sides, but true obscurities. Listeners were

treated to such tracks as “Penny Lane” with a bit more piccolo trumpet solo,

“I Am the Walrus” with an extra beat or two of strings, and a mono version

of a recording commonly known only in stereo or vice versa. Sometimes

only hardcore Beatlemaniacs could tell the variant version from the classic,

and many of them did not care to make the effort. If the group’s albums

were not considered such sacrosanct entities, such rarities would have made