John Lennon
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band: The Ultimate Collection CAPITOL/UMC
Who’d have thought Lennon’s therapeutic confessional could get more exposed?
From the ominous church knell heralding the lyrical bereavement therapy of Mother, to the crushed lullaby to no one My Mummy’s Dead, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970) – undoubtedly his most raw and revealing solo album, arguably his best – was always a harrowing, uncompromising listen. Stillprocessing The Beatles’ split, and psychologically taken apart but not yet reconstructed, by primal therapy, John Lennon delivered a sonic exorcism, tackling his childhood abandonment by both parents, a lifetime of grief and confusion, and the torments of Beatlehood in a 40-minute collision of corroded blues desperation (Well Well Well, I Found Out), blank cynicism (Working Class Hero), scarred gospel soul (Isolation, Mother, God) and serene existential crises (Look At Me).
Band members – Ringo included – would claim that Lennon was in an unstable state during recording, laughing one second, scream-crying the next. It’s this behind-the-scenes gristle that fans and Ziggy blueprint tacked on – instead display a mercurial talent deconstructing his art to break brave new ground. The demo disc hints at the acidpsych classic that early takes of and might have spawned, while and resemble grainy recordings of a 1930s Mississippi bluesman mid-meltdown. begins life as a brilliantly throwaway 50s Americana strumble, a piano-led sounds like a dry run for and is a babbling cod-country mess in which Lennon claims everybody’s talking about constipation, which they definitely weren’t
