Dec 14

John Lennon

Highly Appreciated

JOHN LENNON
 
 
John Lennon  (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980), was an English musician, singer and songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as a founder member of the rock band the Beatles, the most commercially successful band in the history of popular music.  With Paul McCartney, he formed a songwriting partnership that is one of the most celebrated of the 20th century.  When the group disbanded in 1970, Lennon embarked on a solo career that produced iconic songs such as “Imagine”, “Give Peace a Chance” and “Working Class Hero”.  After disengaging himself from the music business in 1975 to raise his infant son Sean, he re-emerged with Yoko Ono in 1980 with the new album Double Fantasy.  He was murdered three weeks after its release.  He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice; as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1994.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
The closest that the Poppees ever came to covering a Beatles song is when they recorded “Love of the Loved”, an obscure Lennon/McCartney song that the Beatles never recorded.  (Actually, it turns out that this song was included among the 15 songs on their famed Decca Records audition tape; Pete Best was still drumming then, so it wasn’t really the Beatles that we all know at that point). 
 
“Sad Sad Love” is one of those achingly emotional songs at which John Lennon excelled; two versions of this song are included, and the spare demo version that closes Side 1 of Pop Goes the Anthology might be even better than the studio version.
 
(December 2010)
 
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“Feedback” starts off with feedback-drenched guitar echo that is among the best I have heard – certainly better than “Free Form Guitar” on Chicago’s first album Chicago Transit Authority, or the side-long “Cambridge 1969” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono that was included on their follow-up to Two Virgins, Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions – then again, Index went on to do a real song rather than just waving their guitar in front of the amp. 
 
(March 2011)
 
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Andy Colquhoun had also contributed a song – appropriately called “Lennon Song” – for a John Lennon tribute album several years earlier, and this song is also included on his solo album, Pick up the Phone, America!.  Many critics consider it the best song on the CD, but it has a lot of company.
 
(August 2011)
 
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Lou Christie wrote most of his own hit songs, along with his songwriting partner Twyla Herbert (and that is quite a story in itself:  She was 20 years older than Christie and a classically trained musician who was also a self-proclaimed mystic).  As such, he is one of the first singer-songwriters in popular music, a fact that John Lennon has remarked on, among others. 
 
 (July 2012)
 
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Finally, I have a recommendation to go with my confession earlier.  If any of you are still signed up with Netflix, you should add the 1994 film Backbeat to your queue.  It is the early history of the Beatles mostly when they were in Hamburg, Germany and primarily follows Stu Sutcliffe (played by Stephen Dorff), an old friend of John Lennon who was in an early incarnation of the band.  Long before they were famous, Sutcliffe was drawn into photography and found a love; he died tragically young before his 22nd birthday.  Along the way, you meet Paul McCartney (the two actors who play John and Paul are dead ringers), George Harrison, and even Ringo Starr, who was hanging around the group even though he wasn’t in the band yet.  Actually the words “the Beatles” were only spoken once during the entire movie; John Lennon mostly just called them “the band”. 
 
The idea is that, in those days, the Beatles were the world’s greatest punk rock group, so the band that they lined up to play the music was drawn from the top American alternative rock bands of the day, like the Afghan Whigs,Soul Asylum, R.E.M., and Sonic Youth.  The drummer was Nirvana’s Dave Grohl, who later became the front man for Foo Fighters (sadly, I believe that I read that they have gone on a hiatus).  However, he still hits the skins from time to time for bands like Queens of the Stone Age.  Highly recommended. 
 
(September 2012)
 
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By now, the parade of early deaths of beloved musicians is long indeed; I remember being affected by the senseless assassination of John Lennon on December 8, 1980 nearly as much as that of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. 

 

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The impact of this one Elvis recording can hardly be overstated.  “Heartbreak Hotel” was one of the biggest influences on John Lennon that inexorably led to the formation of the Beatles.  In a quote given in Wikipedia, John Lennon speaks of his feelings about the song:  “When I first heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, I could hardly make out what was being said.  It was just the experience of hearing it and having my hair stand on end.  We’d never heard American voices singing like that.  They always sung like [Frank] Sinatra or enunciate very well.  Suddenly, there’s this hillbilly hiccuping on tape echo and all this bluesy stuff going on.  And we didn’t know what Elvis was singing about. . . .  It took us a long time to work out what was going on.  To us, it just sounded like a noise that was great.” 

 

John Lennon is not the only British rock legend who was similarly affected by “Heartbreak Hotel”.  George Harrison was only 13 and riding his bike past a friend’s house when he overheard the song being played in 1956; he said the song gave him a “rock and roll epiphany”.  The following year, Harrison auditioned to be the guitarist for John Lennon’s early band the Quarrymen. 

 

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John Lennon was even more blunt:  “If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.”  Ted Nugent has said:  “If you don’t know every Chuck Berry lick, you can’t play rock guitar.” 

 

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Both Paul McCartney and John Lennon have called Buddy Holly a primary influence on their work; Ian Whitcomb once said that “Buddy Holly and the Crickets had the most influence on the Beatles.”  The Beatles did a lovely cover of “Words of Love” that was released in late 1964 on their album Beatles for Sale.  During the recording sessions for the Let it Be album in January 1969, the Beatles recorded a slow version of “Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues” (a song popularized by Buddy Holly, though not written by him); the song was later released on Anthology 3.  Also, John Lennon recorded a cover of “Peggy Sue” on his 1975 solo album Rock ’n’ Roll.  

 

(June 2013/1)

 

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Phil Spector’s work with the Beatles on their final album, Let it Be is more controversial, with many contending that it was more overproduction than production in that case.  Ultimately, the album was re-released in 2003 without Spector’s production and overdubs under the name Let it Be . . . Naked.  Still, Phil Spector worked with John Lennon on several of his solo albums. 

 

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The Beatles performed a sort of mini-Wall of Sound at the close of their masterful Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, not long after Phil Spector came along.  Following the second symphonic build-up within “A Day in the Life”, the orchestra swelled into a crescendo, and then there was a thunderous piano chord (an E-major chord to be exact).  Many people who have been around a piano marvel at how long the instrument can hold a note; and here, the Beatles were dealing that expectation up in spades with a long, slow fade for nearly one full minute before the sound faded into background hiss. 

 

Actually though, it wasn’t just one piano:  John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and one of the Beatles’ roadies, Mal Evans were manning different pianos; while George Martin was playing the same chord on a harmonium.  What’s more, the gain was gradually turned up as the chord faded in order to prolong the effect – at the end (they tell me), it is possible to hear background sounds in the recording studio:  rustling papers, a squeaking chair, and the air conditioners. 

 

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After a few albums of (more or less) pure country, Linda Ronstadt perfected her sound when she connected with one of the top producers of the 1970’s, Peter Asher; he was also Ronstadt’s manager for several years.  Peter Asher and Gordon Waller performed as Peter and Gordon, a British duo who enjoyed several years of success, particularly with their #1 hit in 1964, “A World Without Love”.  The song was written by Paul McCartney but credited as Lennon/McCartney as was all of his music and that of John Lennon in the British Invasion period. 

 

(October 2013)

 

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Among the eulogies written about Lou Reed are some that compare his contributions to rock and roll to those of Bob Dylan and John Lennon, and I can’t really argue with that assessment.  

 

(December 2013)

 

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I have previously written of The Sound of San Francisco and quoted nearly all of Mick Farren’s liner notes for that album; Boyskout is the first (though not the last) UARB to be drawn from the roster.  My tribute to Mick Farren is coming up later this year; his death last year upset me as much as any I can think of from the music world since that of John Lennon. 

 

(January 2014)

 

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Mick Farren’s death last July affected me more than that of any musician since John Lennon back in 1980; he died a little shy of his 70th birthday, like three of my four grandparents. 

 

(March 2014/1)

 

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By contrast, the people at Gear Fab Records – one of the better reissue record companies – are quite enthusiastic about Homer; Galen Niles was brought in to write the liner notes for the 2012 CD, Homer.  (The record company name comes from two Beatles-era expressions for “cool”; both are featured in the background singing on “All Those Years Ago”, the 1981 George Harrison song honoring recently assassinated John Lennon and also featuring the other two living Beatles in the band). 

 

(April 2014)

 

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Following the break-up of the Beatles, George Harrison released a mammoth two-record album in 1970 called All Things Must Pass that also included a third disk called Apple Jam.  Clearly Harrison was creating a lot of music that wasn’t winding up on the Beatles albums.  By the time “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” showed up on Abbey Road, nearly all rock critics were acknowledging that George Harrison was a songwriter equal to John Lennon and Paul McCartney; but I had noticed that at least as far back as Revolver, where his songs were “Taxman”, “Love You To” and “I Want to Tell You”. 
 
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Ringo Starr is without a doubt the most under-appreciated member of the Beatles, so it is not surprising that, when us four Winfree kids divvied up the Fab Four among ourselves, I wound up with Ringo as my favorite Beatle.  
Ringo Starr (real name:  Richard Starkey, Jr.) was the final addition to the classic line-up when he was brought in as the band’s drummer, replacing Pete Best.  He is the oldest of the Beatles (all of 23 when they hit the big time), having been born three months before John Lennon. 
 
(September 2014)
 
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“Move It” was an original song by bandmember Ian “Sammy” Samwell and was first released as the “B” side, with the “A” side being a cover of a song by American artist Bobby Helms called “Schoolboy Crush”.  “Move It” went to #2 on the UK charts in 1958 and is widely regarded as the first authentic British rock and roll song.  John Lennon has been quoted as saying (from Wikipedia):  “Before Cliff [Richard] and the Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music.”  Cliff Richard is the third top-selling singles artist in British history, behind only the Beatles and Elvis Presley. 

 

(November 2014)

 

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The truly heartbreaking part of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis is that Glen Campbell had just launched a comeback a few years before, with his 2008 album Meet Glen Campbell that features Campbell covering songs by U2, Foo Fighters, Tom Petty, and Green Day – “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” being the latter song – plus one of the last songs written by John Lennon, “Grow Old with Me”, and an early Jackson Browne song, “These Days” that was first recorded by Nico in 1967. 

 

(February 2015)

 

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The above photo of the Rolling Stones from Mad magazine is one that I remember well from my younger days, not because the gag was all that great – the balloon quote from Mick Jagger is:  “I’d like people to consider me as something more than ‘just another pretty face’!” – but because the band was apparently at some sort of news conference, and there were name tags in front of each of them.  Almost as soon as we heard about the Beatles, we knew their names, “John, Paul, George, and Ringo”, and even casual fans typically knew the surnames as well.  But it wasn’t like that with the Rolling Stones. 
 
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Their second single was actually a Lennon/McCartney song, “I Wanna Be Your Man”; from Wikipedia:  “According to various accounts, either the Rolling Stones’ manager/producer Andrew Loog Oldham or the Rolling Stones themselves ran into [John] Lennon and [Paul] McCartney on the street as the two were returning from an awards luncheon.  Hearing that the band were in need of material for a single, Lennon and McCartney went to their session at De Lane Lea Studio and finished off the song – whose verse they had already been working on – in the corner of the room while the impressed Rolling Stones watched.” 

 

John Lennon believes that their experience with “I Wanna Be Your Man” was helpful in getting the songwriting team underway; as he related in the famous Playboy magazine interview in 1980 (a few months before his assassination):  “We were taken down to meet them at the club where they were playing in Richmond by Brian [Epstein] and some other guy.  They wanted a song and we went to see what kind of stuff they did.  Mick [Jagger] and Keith [Richards] heard we had an unfinished song – Paul [McCartney] just had this bit and we needed another verse or something.  We sort of played it roughly to them and they said, ‘Yeah, OK, that’s our style.’  But it was only really a lick, so Paul and I went off in the corner of the room and finished the song off while they were all still sitting there talking.  We came back, and that’s how Mick and Keith got inspired to write . . . because, ‘Jesus, look at that.  They just went in the corner and wrote it and came back!’  You know, right in front of their eyes we did it.  So we gave it to them.” 

 

(May 2015)

 

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The October 1964 single by the Beatles, “I Feel Fine” (included on their album Beatles ’65) is credited as the first song to use feedback in a rock recording.  The band was about to leave the recording studio when John Lennon left his guitar resting against his amplifier, only to be greeted by a whine of sound.  A feedback note was then added to the very beginning of the song.  In one of his last interviews, John Lennon spoke proudly of this musical innovation:  “I defy anybody to find a record . . . unless it is some old blues record from 1922 . . . that uses feedback that way.  So I claim it for the Beatles.  Before [Jimi] Hendrix, before the Who, before anybody.  The first feedback on record.” 

 

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Another fun effect is running the same or similar musical sections slightly out of sync; it is variously described as phasing and flanging.  The latter term was reportedly coined by John Lennon and is still in use today; it refers to sound effects caused by the manual or accidental slowing down of tape in a take-up reel, though the effect can be created electronically as well.  The Wikipedia article on flanging describes it this way:  “As an audio effect, a listener hears a ‘drainpipe’ or ‘swoosh’ or ‘jet plane’ sweeping effect as shifting sum-and-difference harmonics are created analogous to use of a variable notch filter.”  One of the earliest uses of phasing in rock music is the 1967 hit song by Small Faces, “Itchycoo Park”. 

 

(July 2015)

 

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John Lennon was beginning to write some new songs and noticed that much of the new music sounded a lot like Yoko Ono’s earlier work, particularly “Rock Lobster” by the B-52’s. This realization fired his inspiration to get a new album out. The couple produced dozens of songs, enough to fill up their hit 1980 album, Double Fantasy, as well as a second planned album, Milk and Honey that was ultimately released in 1984 (following Lennon’s assassination). 
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When The Beatles Anthology documentary came out in 1995, I remember the filmmakers discussing how, in contrast to the mellow conversations from the three living bandmembers, they had to carefully select quotations from John Lennon who was often bitter and sarcastic about the Beatles. Lennon was assassinated at the age of 40, and the break-up of the Beatles was barely a decade in the past at that point. 
(March 2016)

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As to the Beatles’ attitudes toward the Let it Be . . . Naked reissue, Wikipedia notes:  “[Paul] McCartney in particular was always dissatisfied with the ‘Wall of Sound’ production style of the Phil Spector mixes of three tracks, especially for his song ‘The Long and Winding Road’, which he believed was ruined by the process.  George Harrison gave his approval for the Naked project before he died.  McCartney’s attitude contrasted with [John] Lennon’s from over two decades earlier.  In his December 1970 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Lennon had defended Spector’s work, saying, ‘He was given the s--ttiest load of badly recorded s--t – and with a lousy feeling to it – ever.  And he made something out of it. . . .  When I heard it, I didn’t puke.’  Harrison and Ringo Starr also remained complimentary about Spector's contribution, with Starr saying:  ‘I like what Phil did. . . .  There’s no point bringing him in if you’re not going to like the way he does it – because that’s [Wall of Sound] what he does.’” 
 
So how did Let it Be . . . Naked go down 33 years after the original release of Let it Be?  The same sort of muted comments that greeted the new version of Raw Power were in evidence here as well; Wikipedia lists some of them:  Allmusic notes that Let it Be . . . Naked “is overall slightly stronger [than Let it Be] . . . a sleeker, slicker album”; Pitchfork notes that Let it Be . . . Naked is “not essential [. . .] though immaculately presented”; and Salon commented that Let it Be . . . Naked “stripped the original album of both John [Lennon]’s sense of humor and Phil Spector’s wacky, and at least slightly tongue-in-cheek, grandiosity.” 
 
For myself, some tacky items stood out when I scanned the changes made in Let it Be . . . Naked that are listed in Wikipedia; they seem to go beyond adjusting whatever Phil Spector had added to the recordings.  For “Dig a Pony”, Wikipedia states:  “[The] error in second verse (the ‘because’ in [John] Lennon’s vocal track) [was] digitally corrected.”  Similarly, in “Two of Us”, a “minor error in Lennon’s acoustic guitar performance [was] digitally corrected.”  One of the live tracks, “I’ve Got a Feeling” is actually composed of “[a] composite edit of two takes from the rooftop concert”.  After reading this, I have an image in my mind of a high school art student touching up an old master. 
 
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From Wikipedia:  “Written by [John] Lennon as an anguished love song to Yoko Ono, [‘Don’t Let Me Down’] was interpreted by Paul McCartney as a ‘genuine plea’, with Lennon saying to Ono, ‘I’m really stepping out of line on this one.  I’m really just letting my vulnerability be seen, so you must not let me down.’ . . .  Richie Unterberger of Allmusic called it ‘one of the Beatles’ most powerful love songs’.” 
 
(September 2017)
 
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Mostly I had long series in the past 12 months:  3 of my 5 pieces in the Women in Rock series and all 5 in my Rock and Religion series.  I will no doubt have much more to say on both topics, but not right away.  In the latter, I examined Bob Dylan’s Christian period; and the religiously oriented events in the life of the Beatles, before and after the break-up, beginning with John Lennon’s notorious pronouncement that the Beatles are more popular than Jesus.  
(Year 5 Review)
 
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Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.
(Year 7 Review)
Last edited: April 8, 2021