Time Capsule: John Lennon, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
Every Saturday, Paste will be revisiting albums that came out before the magazine was founded in July 2002 and assessing its current cultural relevance. This week, we’re looking at John Lennon’s post-Beatles breakup debut—the nonconformism, the controversy and the violent stripping away of Fab Four mythos that embraced Lennon’s demons with a primal scream still echoing to this day.
This time last year I was on a Beatles-themed study abroad trip in Liverpool (I know, college, right?). My cohort and I ventured through the city, visiting landmarks like the Casbah Club, where John, Paul and George played while still clad in leather and calling themselves The Quarrymen, and a local rec hall where the Lennon-McCartney powerhouse met for the first time. We stood at Eleanor Rigby’s gravestone, drove down Penny Lane, peered through the gates of Strawberry Fields and soaked up every bit of Beatles lore we could find. I’m proud to say, even 55 years after their breakup, Beatlemania still lives on in me.
Not every destination was a colorful romp through psychedelia and the “all you need is love” style propaganda that Beatles fanatics love to preach, though. We visited the childhood homes of each band member (George Harrison’s is now an Airbnb, funnily enough), and these places told a much different story—one that illuminated my mind to the more pensive side of the Beatles’ late discography. Ringo wasn’t born in a hospital, but at home while the bombs of World War II rained down around his neighborhood. George’s house was a tiny abode, quite claustrophobic for his six-person household. Paul’s home, admittedly, was fairly nice. However, John Lennon’s upbringing was by far the most disadvantaged.
His father, Alfred Lennon, was largely absent from his childhood, disappearing to New Zealand when John was six, and their relationship remained strained long after John became a famous musician. His mother, Julia, unable to care for him in the wake of her husband’s departure, handed John over to her older sister, Mary “Mimi” Smith, who was ultimately responsible for raising him. Then, just before John’s 18th birthday, Julia was struck by a car and killed. Years later, in an interview with Playboy, John recounted this moment saying, “I lost her twice. Once as a 5-year-old when I was moved in with my auntie, and once again when she actually physically died.” Playboy being the most ill-suited outlet to talk about such a topic aside, this childhood trauma shapes the heart of Plastic Ono Band. It’s an album unconcerned by The Beatles’ stardom; instead, it’s an exploration of Lennon’s true character and a chance for him to confront his restless mind entirely unchaperoned.
Even in their Beatles days, John was the emotionally leaden counterbalance to Paul’s light-hearted whimsy. Take “A Day in the Life”—Paul cheerfully sings about his morning routine—smoking and combing his hair—and what does John sing about? A man who “blew his mind out in a car.” John and Paul are like those theatre drama masks—the tragedy and comedy respectively—but it’s this dichotomy that made The Beatles so enthralling and versatile during their decade-long dominance as a band. Sure, there was a time when Lennon stood wide-legged, howling “Twist and Shout” and strumming his Rickenbacker, but that was a short-lived farce—a necessary play for pop appeal. By the time Beatlemania hit U.S. stadiums, he was already smoking pot and writing “In My Life.”
As the ‘60s dragged on, Lennon’s songwriting became progressively antithetical to The Beatles image, and yet, Lennon was The Beatles image. From the sharp wit of “A Hard Day’s Night,” to the absurdist lyricism of “I Am the Walrus” and the political satire of “Revolution,” Lennon had spent the better part of a decade as the face of a massive cultural movement. But by 1970, he didn’t believe in any of it. The Beatles were dead, leaving behind a tangled mess of lawsuits, ego clashes and lingering bitterness, and John was alone—well, except for Yoko Ono, of course.
In the months leading up to Plastic Ono Band, the couple underwent “primal therapy”—a radical psychological treatment created by American psychologist Arthur Janov designed to help confront deep-seeded childhood trauma. However, Lennon’s U.S. visa ran out midway through this assigned year of screaming (really, he was simply told to scream to relieve himself of repressed pain), and so he found himself back in England—back in Abbey Road Studios. Plastic Ono Band would finish what Janov started, though: a simple plan to strip Lennon down to his rawest, most painful truths and rid him of the wounds of his youth.
Nowhere is Lennon more personal, more intimate or more flagrant than on the 11 tracks of Plastic Ono Band. It’s an abhorrent denial of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and its grandiose thought experiment. It’s a denial of Abbey Road and its orchestral medleys and multi-track storytelling. Plastic Ono Band is a denial of, well, everything—not building towards some motif or last hurrah, but deconstructing the body and soul—Lennon’s body and soul— through timeless rock and roll.
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