John Lennon Solo Albums Poll

John can really play some feedback!

I imagine there are some 1967 jams where John is doing this while George plays sitar and Paul and Ringo play maracas & congas.

never heard Life with the Lions. neighbor had a vinyl copy of it that he wanted to sell for $150 though. lol

Rawer than Metal Machine Music, tbh.

I like the insouciance of Wolk's review! It's like he wrote his own Walls and Bridges.

insouciant? seems like a lot of received wisdom to me - Imagine is overplayed hippie drivel, POB is good except when you think about it in terms of whiny rich guy, etc

i think it's really hard to write a review of john lennon, or any of the beatles (and *especially* the beatles themselves). some parts of this review (particularly the mind games overview) seemed dismissive to me, but then again, short of writing another book, pretty much anything you say is going to dismiss some aspect of the guy. The notion of yet another compilation of his music does make me tired just thinking about it--- despite the fact that it did make me listen to a bunch of solo lennon today, and like pretty much everything I played. interesting guy!

Wow, now it's total freejazz territory. Sounds almost like Coltrane w Yoko screaming over it.

The notion of yet another compilation of his music does make me tired just thinking about it

yeah I can understand this, being bombarded with his cultural omnipresence every 10 years will do that

I laughed out loud at:

A couple of John's songs here are fantastic, especially the inspired throwaway "Nobody Told Me", allegedly written for Ringo to sing. Yoko's aren't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7v0O8M5vKc

^^^underappreciated gem imho

that is funny (insofar as you can misread it as implying that Yoko didn't write any songs for Ringo to sing) - but I sorta bristled at the implication that Yoko couldn't function in John's idiom. Witness this piece of absolute brilliance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8k4lN3Kd28

No, I disagree (I love M&H's "You're The One") – I just love the terseness of his dismissal, especially after that long sentence.

yeah I can understand this, being bombarded with his cultural omnipresence every 10 years will do that

and yet I always hope that I'm going to stumble upon Lennon's stuff in a way that will somehow cause all of it make more sense than it does. why? he's dead! I've already heard everything!

have you heard Pussycats?

not that it will make anything "make more sense" - really it's just another piece in the incomprehensible puzzle - but what a fun, great-sounding, bleakly funny piece it is

yeah I can understand this, being bombarded with his cultural omnipresence every 10 years will do that

The problem is, it's always the same dozen or so songs, when he did extremely minimalist and challenging stuff that is being ignored by the music industry. His first two solo albums aren't even being reissued! Thom Yorke just recently ripped off "Two Minutes Silence".

They should let Thom handle Lennon's music LOL

pussy cats

yes, and yeah it's just more haze. I came at it from the Nilsson point of view, in which case it's both inspired and tragic. thru a lennon lens, less tragic, more benevolent albeit w/less invested in the end result of HN's general well being...?

Wow, "Radio Play" is a straight up Animal Collective instrumental.

wait Dom are you blaming HN's drinking on Lennon...?

Yeah that's wrong

I mean I know the story that Nilsson busted a vocal chord on that album and went on recording anyway (ostensibly because he didn't want to admit it to Lennon?) but I dunno if that's the kind of thing you can really lay at John's feet.

Liveblogging "Life with the Lions" first play. Just listened to John Lennon pushing the 'off' and 'on' buttons & volume knobds on a radio for 12 minutes! amazing!!!! "Radio Play" is incredible.

'On a windy day let's go on flying
There may be no trees to rest on
there may be no clouds to ride'

"Song for John" is AMAZING.

"Mulberry", this is some nice stuff. Noise acoustic guitar with a slide, Yoko singing sadly but softly. Brilliant.

Love the fast playing at 3.33

no, not blaming his drinking, but more like, lennon kind of riding the train w/him, and in the end lennon had a fortitude that nilsson didn't, and hence didn't have to pay the same kind of consequences

I wonder if John experimenting with alternate tunings in the 60s or if he just was too fucked up to notice the guitars were tuned oddly.

John was totally familiar with multiple tuning styles and he uses a bunch of different ones throughout the Beatles catalog

Dear Prudence uses both open D and drop D iirc

"No Bed For Beatle John" consists of John and Yoko singing the text of press clippings about themselves, in a cappella chant style.

lol

have we had a thread about Lennon solo books? just slightly off topic but has anyone read the new(ish) Philip Norman biog?

There should be a poll. The Pete Shotton one is amazing.

Classic Lennon books:

Pete Shotton - probably the best one out there
May Pang - good account which brings out a lot of the flaws, but makes him more human
Fred Seaman - needs to be treated with some caution, but has an air of authenticity about it for the most part

I did read the Philip Norman one when it came out - but found it quite a dull read. And disappointingly he seems to go for the Eliot Mintz PR line about the Lost Weekend.

Yeah my interest in Shotton was piqued by the Nowhere Boy film. I must get that. I was only vaguely familiar with him but he was clearly more of an important figure than i realised. Or at least you know the film appears to suggest as much.

What's the Eliot Mintz line Bob? And indeed who's he?!

holy fuck amazon:
John Lennon: In My Life by Pete Shotton and Nicholas Schaffner (Hardcover - Nov 1994)
2 used from $165.00

that's a shame

I paid £12 for a paperback on Amazon about 3 months ago.

$165 ! wow how long has it been put of print?

*out

Elliot Mintz is, or was, effectively PR for Yoko - and constantly put out a stream of stories patching up the mythology of John and Yoko as the great romance, minimising the Lost Weekend period, and glossing over John's depression of the mid-to late 70s.

Fred Seaman's assessment:

"She (Yoko) told Mintz to play up her role as businesswoman and to publicize her reliance on psychics. Mintz had once told me that he did not think that press reports about Yoko's confidence in psychics were good for her image. I was therefore astonished when he agreed with everything Yoko said. He was a consummate sycophant."

Really into Walls and Bridges today, especially this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSS2ABconDg

I'm...not fond of Woman.

if i recall, the original demo on the lennon anthology has some real power, but the MOR production on double fantasy really takes the life out of it.

I'm...not fond of Woman🕸.

was just thinking about how pathetic double fantasy & the interviews he gave in 1980 would be seen if he had lived longer

the contrast between the playfulness and inventiveness of lennon's earlier lyrics and shit like "after all, it is written in the stars" is p depressing to me. and yeah the "little child inside the man" stuff suggests that lennon spent a little too much time absorbing, i don't know, self-help books and psychobabble during his period of exile. the double fantasy stuff i honestly enjoy most is the lighthearted stuff like "starting over."

CLEANUP TIME

I love 'Woman' - beautiful song. Lennon was pretty much spent creatively by 1972, but he still turned out the odd gem.

Love it too, mostly for sentimental reasons

I mostly prefer Yoko's tracks on Double Fantasy to John's, though.

Season of Glass is a better album

Johnny will be spinning in his grave.

yeah like i could never make the case that "beware my love" or "loup" is better than "for no one" or "hey jude" or whatever but finding yourself in the zone for speed of sound or red rose speedway is a pleasant experience and the journey should be savored imo. precisely because it's quirky and odd and not always "finished" or polished (in songcraft, performance, and/or production). sorta like how i feel about the white album tbh. or 70s dylan. there are lots of artist where it's fun to just spend time rummaging in their back catalogs and back pages.

"Cookin' (in the Kitchen of Love)" on Ringo's Rotogravure is from early in the John Lennon retirement period.

en I first dug into solo McCartney in the late 90s, I actually tried to make the case to a fellow musician friend of mine that Paul’s post-Beatles work was as good as his Beatles stuff and in some cases better (this isn’t something you can really try to do with Lennon). I played him songs like “Arrow Through Me,” “Back Seat of My Car,” “However Absurd,” “I’m Carrying,” and “Letting Go.” He looked at me like I had three heads.

To be fair, I also probably would have looked at you like you had three heads if you tried to prove this with 'Arrow Through Me' and particularly 'However Absurd' - bad choices.

But there are no solo tracks these guys did as deathless as “Yesterday”...

'Live and Let Die'

as deeply weird as “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” or “Helter Skelter,”

'Secret Friend'

or as perfect as “Martha My Dear”

'No More Lonely Nights' ('Martha My Dear' is a really bad example)

My rankings.

excellent post alfred, though i would (predictably perhaps) put #2 as #1

My rankings🕸.