(The Praeger Singer-Songwriter Collection) Ben Urish, Ken Bielen-The Words and Music of John Lennon-Praeger (2007) (3 page)

tive flights, sometimes just for the absurdity itself, but often for more poetic

or thoughtful ends. While such Beatles’ classics as “Lucy in the Sky with

Diamonds,” “I Am the Walrus” (where the Lewis Carroll inspiration is most

overt), and “Glass Onion” are well-known examples, his post-Beatles career

has numerous illustrations as will be shown.

MusicaL infLuences

Lennon grew up during the tail end of the big-band swing era in postwar

Europe, where the pop music scene was heavily influenced by the American

presence through military bases, economic trade, and war recovery efforts.

Additionally, homegrown artists, national and regional, from traditions such

as the British Music Hall, were still very popular. For example, both Lennon

and his Beatles band mate George Harrison were lifelong George Formby

fans, and outtakes of The Beatles rehearsals show them playing a wide variety

of popular songs, not just the expected rhythm and blues/rock and roll num-

bers. It may have been Paul McCartney who explicitly composed pastiche

songs in these prerock-era pop music traditions, but Lennon was clearly well

schooled in them as well.5

In the mid-1950s Great Britain was hit by the popular craze of skiffle, a

fusion of folksy traditional tunes with Tin Pan Alley sensibilities, played on

homemade or inexpensive instruments. The impromptu inventiveness had

an appeal for the artistically inclined and attention-seeking young Lennon,

and he formed a skiffle group while learning to accompany himself on

banjo.

Nearly concurrent was the explosion of American rockabilly, rhythm and

blues, and rock and roll that hit Great Britain in full force by 1956. As were

many others, Lennon was entranced and excited, and pushed his skiffle orga-

nizations to incorporate this new music. Lennon’s fascination with and love

for the music of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and others never

left him. In finding them, he had found himself.

In My Life

BeatLe MoonLighting

Once he found his drive, Lennon was by all accounts relentless. By early

spring of 1957, at the age of 16, Lennon had formed his first skiffle band,

The Black Jacks. They soon changed their name to The Quarry Men, taking

the moniker from the school that Lennon and most of the members were

attending. Membership changed fairly regularly, although a standard pool

of players seems to have formed, including Paul McCartney, fairly early on.

More and more rockabilly and rhythm and blues were played, and the band

changed names several times, eventually stabilizing by the fall of 1960 as The

Beatles.6 Just over two years later, in October 1962, the first of their charting

hits was released.

With McCartney’s assistance and the songwriting of Chuck Berry and

Buddy Holly as examples, Lennon began composing songs. Like those two

rock and roll pioneers, Lennon and McCartney came up with the music as

well as the lyrics. No matter who wrote what or how much, almost all of their

professional songwriting collaborations from their teen years until the end of

The Beatles are credited to both men equally. Legend has it that this stems

from an early agreement between the two while they were in their teens.7

Some songs were true collaborations, some were the sole effort of one or the

other, and it seems an example of every possible variation in between can be

ascertained. In the flood of Beatle releases and the sheer amount of work he

produced, it is somewhat surprising to discover that Lennon composed songs

while a Beatle that the group did not record.

Lennon’s most wel -known early composition that was not used by The Bea-

tles is “Bad to Me.” One of Lennon’s pleasanter efforts of the time, it features

a spoken-sung opening prologue, a rarity among Lennon’s compositions. Also

lyrical y more sophisticated than most of his early work, the song became a top-

10 hit for Bil y J. Kramer and the Dakotas in 1963 in the United Kingdom.

One of Lennon’s earliest compositions survived in the band’s repertoire

long enough to be recorded by The Beatles, but only at their failed audition

for Decca Records held on January 1, 1962. The song is called “Hello Little

Girl,” and it was eventually included on the Beatles’
Anthology
collection.

This ebullient song with a fast-paced lead vocal was recorded by The Four-

most and was a hit for them in England in 1963.

The lost gem of Lennon’s early non-Beatles works is simply titled “I’m in

Love.” Musically and lyrically more accomplished, the song builds excite-

ment with each strain and verse, shifting meter and rhythm to match the

differing lyrical tone of each section. The Fourmost secured this one too,

making it a top-20 hit in the United Kingdom.

“One and One Is Two” is certainly arithmetically correct and moves

along at a solid pace but has derivative lyrics and a slightly awkward refrain.

McCartney is most responsible for this early 1964 effort with some prob-

able input from Lennon, though he later disavowed it.8 It was never even

The Words and Music of John Lennon

considered as a possible song for The Beatles, and was even rejected when

they first tried to give it away at the height of Beatlemania!9

“World without Love” was a number-one hit for Peter and Gordon in

1964 and Lennon reputedly made some minor lyrical adjustments, but the

song is pretty much McCartney’s.10 Other early Lennon compositions were

either eventually turned into numbers for The Beatles or are all but forgotten

and now lost.

In the course of The Beatles’ recording careers there were several Lennon

songs that were either never fully completed, rejected at some point in the

process, or abandoned by Lennon himself. Some have been included in The

Beatles’
Anthology
CDs; others still exist in the vaults or the hands of audio

bootleggers. Because that part of Lennon’s career is not relevant to this work,

they are not discussed here. However, some compositions of Lennon’s done

while he was a Beatle but never recorded for release by them, or recorded and

unissued at the time of their breakup, were returned to, and therefore will be

discussed at the appropriate place in Lennon’s post-Beatles chronology.

During his time as a member of The Beatles, Lennon did not really col-

laborate musically with other recording artists until The Beatles as a function-

ing unit was coming to an end and Lennon began his personal and artistic

partnership with Yoko Ono. There are two brief exceptions to this, and both

involve Paul McCartney.

The first also involves another rock group from Great Britain, The Rolling

Stones. Members of both groups had known each other for some years, and

Lennon and McCartney had given The Rolling Stones a song they had com-

posed called “I Wanna Be Your Man,” though The Beatles later recorded

and performed it as a vocal feature for Ringo Starr. Supposedly, observing

Lennon and McCartney at work on the song had inspired Keith Richards and

Mick Jagger to begin composing as well.11

In 1967 Lennon and McCartney added harmony vocals to The Rol ing Stones’

single “We Love You.” Even though their voices are easily noticed and the public

knew of their contribution at the time, the single peaked at number 50.

Once The Beatles set up Apple Records and began building a stable of art-

ists other than themselves to record for that label, they were involved to vary-

ing degrees in the activities of some of their artists. One group Lennon took

particular interest in he named Grapefruit, after a book of Ono’s. Lennon

and McCartney produced a track from their album
Around Grapefruit
titled

“Dear Delilah” although Terry Melcher was officially credited. The produc-

tion is clean and energetic, but nothing out of the ordinary. Oddly, another

song on the album, “Lullaby,” sounds very much like a Lennon composition,

and Lennon must have liked it. When Ono copyrighted a batch of Lennon’s

home tapes in preparation for the
Lost Lennon Tapes
radio show, she mistak-

enly, though understandably, included a version of “Lullaby.”12 The group’s

bass player George Alexander wrote the song. The group had a small hit with

“Dear Delilah,” but Lennon did not produce another artist besides himself

or Ono until Bill Elliot and the Elastic Oz Band in 1971.

2

 The Bal ad of John and Yoko, 

Late 1968 to Early 1970

While it is well known that The Beatles recorded together until early in 1970

and were a contractually bound entity until 1975,1 various sources have posed

the questions of and answers to when, how, and why The Beatles broke up.

All agree, however, that it was a slow and fractious process. Some date the

band’s split as the end of the last tour late in 1966. Others mark the group’s

dissolution at the death of their manager Brian Epstein in August 1967. Still

others select the period when their two-record album
The Beatles
(known

as the White Album) was nearing completion and Lennon began his artistic

collaborations with his soon-to-be wife, conceptual and performance artist

Yoko Ono.

The validity of this interpretation is open to question, but certainly Lennon’s

creative energies were directed toward non-Beatles projects, and his artistic

sensibilities were modified and redirected. It would seem unfair however to

blame Ono, as used to be fashionable, for the demise of The Beatles by pull-

ing Lennon away from them. That scenario obscures and ignores other issues

impacting the dynamic of The Beatles, such as George Harrison’s maturing

talent, among many other factors. Just as important is that it ignores the fact

that Lennon’s impulses were constantly changing, and, if anything, collabo-

rating with Ono refreshed and reinvigorated his work.

Two Virgins

Without the other Beatles, Lennon appeared in a supporting role in the film

How I Won the War
(1967). The film was directed by Richard Lester, who had

also directed The Beatles’ first two feature films
A Hard Day’s Night
and
Help!

6    The Words and Music of John Lennon

A promotional single was released for
How I Won the War,
which Lennon had

no hand in conceiving or executing, although it used a clip of his voice from the

film’s soundtrack.2 Discounting that single, the
Two Virgins
album was Lennon’s

first recorded artistic statement without the involvement of any of the other Bea-

tles. It was also his first of three nonpop music album col aborations with Ono.

The full title of the album is
Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins
and,

like the next two experimental collaborations, it invites the listener to cease

being a passive consumer, but instead become an active improvisational co-

performer, albeit at a technological distance. The recording consists of tape-

looped sound collages supported mainly by airy, pulsating percussions at

varying speeds; ambient room noise; and brief snatches of dialogue (natural

as well as seemingly performance improvised) from Lennon and Ono. The

entire proceedings clock in at just under half an hour. Ono’s characteristic

tremolo wailings are also present throughout. Listeners can add their own

sounds, vocal and otherwise, to “finish” the unfinished music.

Lennon had reportedly made similar home recordings previously, and the

results of such experimentation had been applied to numerous Beatle record-

ings from the previous two years. A sample of what these might have been

like is the sound collage used for “Jessie’s Dream” from The Beatles’
Magical

Mystery Tour
television film broadcast near the end of 1967.

A close listen to
Two Virgins
reveals Lennon’s natural nonsensical humor

popping up at times, his mocking of mundane domestic moments (similar

to his books and some of The Beatles’ later Christmas fan club recordings),

the performing of jangly piano chords (even a bit of a sea shanty) and an

early attempt at his increasingly aggressive, yet almost minimalist, feedback

guitar playing. The work sets the pattern for much of Lennon and Ono’s

experimental musical conversations of the next two years. Nothing on the

album was particularly new to followers of free form or avant-garde and

experimental music and recordings. But the combination of the two art-

ists and Lennon’s presence meant that whatever audience the album found

would not have been likely to have fully understood the roots of the project,

and probably easily ignored it or were just plain baffled by it.

The album gained notoriety not for its recorded content but for its cover, on

which Lennon and Ono appeared nude, attempting to convey both a sort of

Adam and Eve / childlike innocence with nothing to hide and, perhaps, to sym-

bolize his artistic rebirth through the collaboration. The resulting scandal over

the cover ensured that the album was more talked about than listened to, and