Day 11: John Lennon - John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band

Album art courtesy of Apple Records

It’s high time I sat down to listen to some of Lennon’s solo material, as I’ve pretty much directed all my post-Beatle attention to the solo works of George Harrison. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is Lennon’s debut solo album, released in 1970. Ringo is on the drums, Klaus Voorman plays bass, and it was unfortunately produced by the abominable Philip Spector.

The album came after the Beatles had broken up, and John Lennon had engaged in primal therapy to hash out his resulting identity crisis, which is where rich people scream to get in touch with their childhood trauma. The result is an angry and vulnerable record that’s almost sometimes uncomfortable to listen to, but in the best way. On some songs it feels like he’s exorcising demons through primal screaming on tape, like when he wails like a child on “Mother” or yells on “Well Well Well.”

The album is naked, vulnerable, and angry, presumably like he was at the time. There are songs where he’s wrestling with his identity, one song about feeling isolated with him and Yoko against the world, another presented as a religious awakening into finding out that there are no gods or gurus that can help. By the end of the record, he seems to have gotten somewhere with his anger and his crisis of self after being one of the Fab Four, singing “I was the Walrus / But now I'm John / And so, dear friends / You'll just have to carry on / The dream is over.”

I listened to it once with headphones laying down, and another time with it on a speaker in the background. It’s definitely one of those that you need to sit with to properly enjoy, which I’m sure I will continue to do in the future. It has that Phil Spector-effect where you can just feel the music in your bones if you sit down to enjoy it, which I hate on principle but secretly love. It’s sad that the murderous weasel was such a genius.

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is close to the perfect post-Beatle solo record, not quite reaching the dizzying heights of probably my all-time favourite album All Things Must Pass, but it’s not far off. This one is a 9.5/10 for me, the highest I’ve given so far.