(The Praeger Singer-Songwriter Collection) Ben Urish, Ken Bielen-The Words and Music of John Lennon-Praeger (2007) (28 page)

of waiting for a Beatles reunion, it is surprising that the song only made it to

number six on
Billboard
magazine’s Hot 100 chart.

Lennon had developed the lyrics to “Real Love” more thoroughly, and the

song had a long history. Lennon had begun it as “Real Life” in 1977, another

of his songs for the proposed musical. As he developed it, he turned a section

of the song into “I’m Stepping Out.” Yet another section became part of

110 The Words and Music of John Lennon

the genesis of “Watching the Wheels.” What remained became “Real Love”

by 1978.4 In 1980, Lennon returned to the song, now calling it “Boys and

Girls.” Many demos and rehearsals exist with either piano or guitar accom-

paniment, and at least one source claims that Lennon worked on it with the

band during the
Double Fantasy
sessions.5

He sings of how his relationship with his love has changed him. He is self-

assured. All the baggage of his past means nothing in the face of his “real

love.” Lennon’s demo consisted of two vocal tracks, his piano accompani-

ment, and a drum machine. Surprisingly, some demos seem to be of bet-

ter sound quality than the one used by The Threetles. Lennon’s vocals are

akin to his delivery on the Beatles’ “Across the Universe” a decade earlier

but sound slightly artificial due to the restoration. McCartney, Harrison, and

Starr add acoustic guitars, electric guitar, electric and standup bass, drums

and percussion, and backing harmony vocals. Unlike they did on “Free as

a Bird,” Lennon’s band mates do not each take a turn in the spotlight on

“Real Love.” And, because the song was more completed to start with and

the focus is on one lead vocalist, “Real Love” is in some ways the stronger of

the two tracks, with Harrison’s short guitar break a standout passage. Despite

this, “Free as a Bird” performed better on the
Billboard
singles chart than

“Real Love,” which topped out at number 11 on
Billboard
’s Hot 100.

Once the excitement over The Beatles’ “reunion” and the release of the

third part of the
Anthology
compendium had died down, the
John Lennon

Anthology
box set collection was released two years later in 1998. Then,

beginning in 2000, an ambitious, multiyear project of remixing, remaster-

ing, and reissuing all of Lennon’s solo material, along with bonus cuts, was

begun. Occasionally these bonus tracks were songs that had not been legally

released before.

John Lennon anthoLogy

With the overwhelming success of the Beatles’
Anthology
and the publicity

that existed confirming the existence of many other John Lennon recordings

in various stages of completion, it was to be expected that a parallel collec-

tion of Lennon’s post-Beatles material would finally surface. Hardcore fans

who knew of the bounty included in
The Lost Lennon Tapes
broadcasts busily

compiled what they were sure would be on the collection.

If a collection of Lennon rarities and collectibles had indeed come out

under the heading of the radio show and was tied to it, it surely would have

included more of the highlights of that offering. But just as
The Lost Lennon

Tapes
radio broadcasts had clearly influenced the
Anthology
sets, the Beatles’

Anthology
in turn influenced this collection, steering it away from some of

the more esoteric inclusions and toward studio rehearsals and works in prog-

ress. While fans of
The Lost Lennon Tapes
may have been disappointed at

some omissions and are still awaiting another release,
John Lennon Anthology

Gone from This Place 111

has some of the intriguing material from the radio series and a nice range

of other materials, as these key examples not previously discussed elsewhere

demonstrate.

The first disc in the four-disc set includes “Well (Baby Please Don’t Go),”

taken from the
Imagine
sessions and recorded a month after Lennon’s per-

formance of the song at the Fillmore show with Frank Zappa and the Moth-

ers of Invention. Lennon had performed this in his early Beatles days, though

certainly not with the hard-edged guitar he provides here to match his gritty

vocals. The trio of Lennon, Klaus Voorman on bass, and Jim Gordon on

drums is quite good, if a little spare sounding, even with the addition of sax

work by stalwart Bobby Keyes bringing them up to a quartet.

The song is not a rehearsal jam and might have been intended for release

as the flip side of a single, though the habit had already been established that

Ono took the B-sides. Perhaps it had been posited that Ono should have her

own releases, though Lennon kept her on his B-sides until his release of the

“Mind Games” single in 1973. Phil Spector was co-producing on this album,

and it is unfortunate that the sparer sound had no impact on his thinking two

years later when Lennon and he began their project of recording similar rock

and roll standards.

“Long Lost John” is a traditional folk song and does sound like a quick

jam designed to clear the musical palette, though it may be a number Len-

non learned in his skiffle craze days. The enjoyable recording comes from the

Plastic Ono Band
sessions. A tired-sounding Lennon seems to gain impetus

and strength as he performs, until he hits a verse where he extemporizes lyr-

ics that declare, “I got in about a half-past three, you don’t look out you’re

gonna spew on me” before breaking himself up and stopping the band (which

includes Ringo Starr and Voorman). Ono, who produced the CD collection,

lets the track continue and we hear Lennon saying, “I’m defunct! That’s one

of the problems.” Indeed it is.

Ono includes several fragments of dialogue and musical pieces throughout

the set. This track is both. The band finishes its performance at the 1972

Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon,
and the crowd cheers for them. Lewis

makes a comment about Lennon that it seems Ono wants us to ponder for

its deeper implications beyond the show. Lennon “came here to help” Lewis

states, and “he meant to say something.” Lewis then adds, “he did both

those things. He has split. Let’s thank him very much.”

“Be My Baby,” along with “Angel Baby,” had been included on
Roots,

but Lennon rejected them from the track list for
Rock
’
N
’
Roll.
Lennon’s

performance of “Be My Baby” must be a spoof of the original, and he may

have rejected it (needlessly it would seem) out of embarrassment. As with

the other Spector-produced tracks, the song builds at a lethargic pace—at

least when compared to the original. It takes over a minute to build to the

point where Lennon begins his pseudo-ecstatic moans and chirping noises

and another five seconds before the song gets to his affected, feminine, and

112 The Words and Music of John Lennon

fey-sounding performance of the lyrics. Based on accounts of the sessions,

the likelihood is that Lennon was functional, but inebriated, for this perfor-

mance. He s-stretches out the
s
-sounds at one point and s-somnambulates

into a s-series of groaning orgasmic commentary as the s-song limps along

to its fadeout.

The cut might have been rescued by new vocals, as Lennon succeeded in

doing with some of the other Spector tracks; as it is, at least Lennon had the

commitment to maintain the spoof all the way to the end. It is more odd

than awful, and after a few drinks, listeners may be as amused as Lennon must

have been.

Bob Dylan’s 1979 album
Slow Train Coming
documented Dylan’s conver-

sion to Christianity and produced the hit “Gotta Serve Somebody.” Lennon

had acknowledged Dylan’s influence on his songwriting many times and must

have been listening, because Dylan’s conversion was apparently so upsetting

that he composed an answer song to Dylan’s track titled “Serve Yourself.”

Multiple takes exist of the song taken at different speeds and performed on

either piano or guitar. On this one, strumming angrily on an acoustic guitar,

Lennon in a solo home recording from 1980, replies to Dylan, “ain’t nobody

gonna do for you.” A person may variously put their trust in “devils” or “laws”

or “Christ” or “Marx” or even “Marx and Spencer’s” or “Woolworth’s,”

but, in Lennon’s purview, “you’re gonna have to serve yourself.” While on

other home recordings of the late 1970s, Lennon either mocked Dylan by

rhythmically reading newspaper stories in a Dylanesque drawl to a chugging

guitar accompaniment or parodying Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”

in another recording available in the CD set, this is decidedly different.

At his most sardonic and bitingly funny, Lennon spits out a series of con-

demning lyrics while referencing such wide-ranging and familiar pop music

sources as “As Time Goes By” and “Down by the Riverside.” Furthermore,

he takes on the persona of a stereotypical parental authority figure and spouts

a mesh of empty clichés from “put you back in the Stone Age” to “you

should have been in the bloody war” to “get in there and wash your ears,”

mirroring the empty rhetoric of the religious authorities he challenges.

Interestingly, Lennon lists the religions’ key figures (Jesus, Buddha,

Mohammed, Krishna) and not the religions or beliefs. Lennon, 10 years

after recording “Working Class Hero” with lyrics decrying a system in which

people are being “doped with religion,” is still railing against what he sees

as palliatives and against people unwilling or unable to take responsibility for

their situation and actions while clinging to a father figure.

Lennon can he heard justifiably chortling at the end of his fiery perfor-

mance as Ono starts to comment. There’s no evidence that Lennon planned

to formally record the composition. What the song might have become had

Lennon taken it into the studio is unclear, but in this raw form it remains one

of Lennon’s most powerful and intriguing works, much closer in spirit to the

works of
Plastic Ono Band
than of
Double Fantasy.

Gone from This Place 113

No studio recording of the song “Life Begins at 40” was done. The song is

somewhat of a country and western parody, with fairly polished lyrics and an

ironic sense of humor, with lines such as “I’ve been dead for 39” in response

to the title’s statement. As mentioned in chapter 5, some sources indicate

that Lennon was composing this song for Ringo Starr to use on what would

become his 1981 album
Stop and Smell the Roses,
and Starr did have a pre-

dilection for country and western in the past, even back to his Beatle days.

The version on the CD set is fine but seems to be only about half of a song,

needing another verse or two. Lennon’s performance includes an amusing

spoken introduction as if he were performing it at a country and western club

lounge somewhere.

“The Rishi Kesh Song” is a 1980 home demo that starts out sounding like

a combined parody of George Harrison and Lennon himself and then seems

to turn into a harrowing fragment about feeling suicidal. The first part has a

dry take on mysticism by asserting the claims that “the magics in the mantra

will give you all the answers” and “everything that’s not here’s not there.”

The clanging guitar alters rhythm and tone as Lennon says, “but still” and

then sings, “feel so suicidal” (a reference to the Beatles’ White Album track

“Yer Blues”) before repeating “somethin’ is wrong” several times for over a

minute until the piece fades and ends. A significant number of the Beatles’

White Album tracks were composed in Rishikesh, the location in India of the

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram that the Beatles and their wives visited in

1968, and an earlier version of this song is reputedly one of them.

Lennon introduces the piece as “the happy Rishi Kesh song” with what

is apparently sarcastic irony. The juxtaposition of what at first seems to be a

parody to the grim desperation of the second section is so shocking that it

takes a while to realize that they are part of the same work. The vapid slogan-

eering and nonsensical answers of the first part are no solace at all for a truly

tortured soul. Whether this was all Lennon ever intended the song to be—it

is so powerful it just might be—or if he had larger plans for the work is not

known. But “The Rishi Kesh Song,” “Serve Yourself,” and few other songs

he was working on at the time provide evidence that, despite the criticisms

that his songs on
Double Fantasy
were too complacent, Lennon still had

plenty of vitriol for injustice and righteous indignation for “hypocritics.”

A home demo of Lennon singing and playing piano for a moderately paced

song titled “Mr. Hyde’s Gone (Don’t Be Afraid)” sounds designed to pla-

cate a frightened child. Soon it is clear, however, that Lennon is singing to a

woman (“girl, you’ve been good to me”) about staying up to see the dawn