(The Praeger Singer-Songwriter Collection) Ben Urish, Ken Bielen-The Words and Music of John Lennon-Praeger (2007) (23 page)

something that does not feel right to “screw it.” The verses tell the story of

the protagonist’s state of mind with some precise images, such as the open-

ing “blues around my head.” Lennon’s compact lyrical structure continues

with a few home details, singing, for example, that “the cats have all been

blessed.”

Other, subsequently released versions of the song contain an additional

verse about a doctor who steps out dancing for the odd reason of sweetening

up his breath. The shift to a verse about someone other than the narrator and

the offbeat explanation for his behavior was wisely eliminated during rehears-

als. This was the third single released from the album and became a small hit,

making it to number 55 in the United States.

Ono’s “Sleepless Night” follows, as if the man’s having stepped out for the

night has put the woman into a state of frustration, sexual and otherwise. The

song gulps along as the singer continues in a state of emotional and physical

unease, broken up by a bit of sexual humor.

“I Don’t Wanna Face It” is the real rocker on the album and a standout

track in all respects. The song has several blistering guitar passages supporting

much of it, similar to Lennon’s late 1960s or early 1970s rumbling volcano

sounds during his minimalist phase. This alternates with a catchy rhythmic

riff that kicks the song off after Lennon’s characteristically free-form count in

of “Un, deux, ein, zwei, hickle-pickle” and returns a few times throughout

the number. This song finds its slot from the first note and successfully gal-

lops with it to the end.

What the words refuse to face is the sense of self and responsibility in rela-

tionship to the rest of humanity. Once again Lennon’s lyrical control is firm,

as he looks into the mirror and dialogues with himself about these issues.

Lennon blends clichés with sharp descriptions and ironic juxtapositions, such

as “lookin’ for oblivion with one eye on the hall of fame” and a saying he may

have found in the work of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz: “You wanna save

humanity, but it’s people that you just can’t stand.” Schulz’s character Linus

had made the same observation in a
Peanuts
daily cartoon strip years before

Lennon used the line.

The introspective lecture contains obvious references to Lennon himself

as a seeker of “peace and love” and the leader of a “big ol’ band,” a possible

reference to The Beatles. The singer further chides himself for looking for

a “world of truth” while always refusing to see himself for what he really is.

There is a final hopeful assurance, though, as the last lyric of the last verse

states that the promised land can be seen and the singer is sure he can make

it to that destination.

I Don’t Wanna Face It, 1981–1988 89

Lennon’s vocal performance is vigorous, even for him. He resurrects some

of his barking and yelping sounds, not heard since The Beatles’ “Hey Bull-

dog.” There they were used for comic commentary and effect in relation to

the song’s topic, but here it is Lennon’s sheer dynamism that propels him

to make the noises. As the song fades, Lennon howls and then shouts in a

startled manner, “every time I look in the mirror, I don’t see anybody there!

Whoo!” This remark was a key part of the lyrics for his unfinished song “Mir-

ror, Mirror (On the Wall).”

Certainly it is pointless to argue with success, and this album produced

three hits for Lennon. Had this track been a single, there might have been

four. As it stands, the song justifiably takes its place as one of Lennon’s better

tracks, even in its not-quite-finished form.

Other recorded takes show a similar drive. In a version on the
John Lennon

Anthology,
Lennon cues guitarist Earl Slick by shouting his name with a gusto

not heard in other session recordings. At the end of this take, the playing

breaks down into random noise, in a way similar to the connecting section

between “I’m Losing You” and “I’m Moving On” from the earlier-issued

Double Fantasy
album. It sounds intentional and may have been an idea

Lennon transferred to those other recordings. As the take finishes, Lennon

notes, “my picks get half the size!” It is just that kind of performance.

What seems to be Ono’s song in response to the anxiety of self-reflection

is “Don’t Be Scared,” a song Lennon may have known in some form. The

song suggests that fear of commitment to a relationship is really the fear of

committing to life and that the joy is in the journey, not the destination.

It is a sparse-sounding track, like several of Ono’s efforts on this album.

The approach may be her attempt not to overshadow Lennon’s unpolished

works, or to match the emotionally direct content of the lyrics with a direct

unadorned sound.

A jaunty number called “Nobody Told Me” was the first single released

from the album and is reputed to have been one of the titles Lennon was

working on to give to Ringo Starr for his next album. A rolling bass line

anchors the song that swings along merrily at a moderate rocking pace. A few

instrumental flourishes here and there add a bit of spark to the piece, but the

band functions at a point of being tight enough to allow themselves to be

loose and the song’s feeling of spontaneity has enough momentum for it all

to gel.

The lyrics of the verses are more or less a series of inconsistencies from the

start, with “everybody’s talkin’ but no one says a word” and such near-Zen

observations as “everybody’s flying, but never touch the sky.” Each verse

ends with an out-of-place statement that doesn’t seem to follow from the

preceding statements, such as the line repeated from “Move over Ms. L”:

“They’re starvin’ back in China, so finish what you got.” Earlier, it was,

“There’s Nazis in the bathroom, just below the stair.” The chorus doesn’t

try to make sense of these situations, but just accepts them with the comment

90 The Words and Music of John Lennon

that “nobody told me there’d be days like these” before adding “strange days

indeed” and “most peculiar, mama!”

The mood is light and humorous with a slight undertone of possible unease

that finally dissipates in the chorus. At first listen, the song seems slight and

easily dismissible, a pleasurable effort with little substance. But repeated lis-

tening provides insight into some greater depth behind the innocuous per-

plexities of the words and the bouncy lilt of the music. The appeal of the song

definitely grows, and that may partly account for its becoming a top-five hit

in the United States.

Ono comments and builds on Lennon’s observations by declaring that

the only sane response to a world of peculiarities is to give up one’s sanity

in her short song “O’Sanity.” Again, Ono uses humor to make her point:

“psychotic builds a castle and neurotic lives in it.”

At last, after a decade and a half of working reggae riffs into numerous

compositions and recordings, Lennon composed “Borrowed Time,” the

closest he came to a full-out reggae effort. The song was released as a single

and did not fare well in the United States; it failed to chart because reggae

rhythms never caught on with the U.S. mass listening public as much as they

had in England, where the song charted at number 32.5

The lyrics extol the idealistic virtues of growing older. The first section

describes the hesitancy and unsure state of being younger, characterizing it

as living in “deep despair” and the “illusion of freedom and power.” The

chorus reminds listeners that we are “living on borrowed time, without a

thought for tomorrow.” After the first verse, this emphasizes the callow lack

of awareness of youth.

The second and third verses showcase that being older is better, because

a little experience has brought understanding and clarity and “less compli-

cations.” This time the chorus, verbally the same, says that it is possible to

live in and for the moment without worry over the future. The song ends

with a comic monologue from Lennon about leaving the angst of young

love behind and trading it for physical infirmity. But having made the point,

he cheerfully scat-sings a drum solo as the song moves toward its conclu-

sion. Once again, Lennon’s serious insights are kept from being either heavy

handed or clichéd by his wry sense of humor.

In “Your Hands,” Ono sings fully and powerfully in Japanese and concur-

rently gives a soft-spoken English translation of the words. Various aspects of

the beloved’s physical self are dreamt about (hands, skin, mouth, arms, eyes)

between choruses that declare, “no matter how many times we meet,” even

over several life times, “it’s not enough.”

Presumably inspired by either May Pang or Ono, “(Forgive Me) My Little

Flower Princess” has little going for it aside from a functional semi-shuffling

rhythm. This is a very unfinished composition, and Lennon drops words and

phrases in a song that appears to be about the power of forgiveness in roman-

tic relationships. A couple of lines show a little promise, such as “take up the

I Don’t Wanna Face It, 1981–1988 91

dance where we left off,” for example, but the rest are banal and mundane.

The song has no chorus or middle-eight section and offers only fragmentary

and fractured lyrics. Taking this into consideration and in view of his store

of other potential contenders, it is puzzling that Lennon even brought this

one to the sessions. But, of course, it is not known what he ultimately had

in mind.

If the male agenda set the topic of the dialogues previously, the female

voice takes the lead at this point on the disc. In a conscious attempt to link

sonically with Lennon’s “Grow Old with Me,” which existed only on a dem-

onstration cassette, Ono provides a demo tape of her companion song “Let

Me Count the Ways.” Like Lennon’s recording, the only accompaniment is

piano.

In the album liner notes, Ono relates that the two songs were originally

the inspiration and planned backbone for
Double Fantasy
but were put off so

long that it was decided to make them the core of the follow-up album. The

songs were inspired by the famous poems of Robert Browning and Eliza-

beth Barrett Browning. Ono’s effort takes the first line of Elizabeth Barrett

Browning’s poem and the idea behind it, but then goes its own way in four

stanzas that enumerate not only “the ways how I love you” but also how the

loved one is missed, viewed, and has touched the speaker. Musically, the song

has a simple intensity that underscores the verbal pleading for the chance to

convince the loved one how much he is cared for.

“Grow Old with Me” is Lennon’s companion song and shows greater

closeness to its inspirational source and model, as if Lennon might have

started off contemplating merely setting the poem to music at one point. In

any event, it manages to be pure and exact in form and content—a guileless

expression of idealized, heartfelt love.

Sadly, Lennon never created a professional recording of the song, and all

that exists is the cassette version. On this, Lennon plays piano and is accom-

panied by a rhythm box that keeps time very well but spoils the mood of the

song. Furthermore, Lennon sings in a high voice, possibly falsetto, and even

taking into account the low sound quality of the source material, his voice

sounds thin to the point of distraction. Some accounts claim that this was

one of the four songs Ono gave the three surviving Beatles to work with and

would have been the third release after “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” for

the Beatles’
Anthology
sets.6 However, they opted to do nothing with the

track after a quick try at creating some new backing for it.

In the album’s liner notes, Ono relates that she and Lennon had planned

on a big, lush orchestral arrangement and production for the song, hoping

it would become a new standard for weddings and anniversaries. In fact, in

the
John Lennon Anthology
collection, an overdubbed version of “Grow Old

with Me” is included and it marks an intriguing posthumous collaboration

between Lennon and The Beatles’ producer, George Martin. It is not clear

when this was done, but the reasonable assumption is that it was done after

92 The Words and Music of John Lennon

the Threetles, as fans called the surviving Beatles, officially abandoned their

work on it.

Martin’s arrangement has to be careful not to swamp the frail-sounding,

low-fidelity original that does not sound as though it has been given as much

of the studio restoration wizardry treatment that the Threetles gave the two

tracks they completed. Even so, Martin’s recognizable sound, so associated

with The Beatles, is readily evident. His baroque-inspired arrangement begins

with flowing strings and later includes a solo flute that provides short coun-

termelody embellishments. Simple supporting brass variations can at times be