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.
“God” is the most obvious example of Lennon’s abandonment. The track is a renunciation of everything, a laundry list of cultural and spiritual figures he no longer believes in. “God” has been called sacrilegious, contrived and on-the-nose, but I think the full intent of Lennon’s argument can only be felt together, as to not take anything out of context. The bulk of “God” reads as follows: “I don’t believe in magic / I don’t believe in I-ching / I don’t believe in Bible / I don’t believe in Tarot / I don’t believe in Hitler / I don’t believe in Jesus / I don’t believe in Jesus / I don’t believe in Kennedy / I don’t believe in Buddha / I don’t believe in Mantra / I don’t believe in Gita / I don’t believe in Yoga / I don’t believe in Kings / I don’t believe in Elvis / I don’t believe in Zimmerman / I don’t believe in The Beatles.”
I see “God” as a precursor to “Imagine,” a rejection of societal status quos and a call for people to unify out of love. Both songs have been subject to their share of controversy (Steely Dan goes as far as to scold Lennon on “Only a Fool Would Say That”), but I don’t see these words as contrived or out of touch. Lennon has seen firsthand how people are quick to devote themselves to a cause that promises to improve their lives and absolve them of their troubles. Whether it’s through a god, political leader, celebrity, drug or lifestyle, he’s saying it’s all an addiction, a scapegoat for the world’s issues. Instead of devoting time to the self, people want someone else to do it for them. “God” is less an attack on the specific things he mentions and more so a juxtaposition of how a cult of personality can make people feel exonerated of blame. And for Beatles fans still reeling from the band’s breakup, “God” must have hit like a punch to the gut. Lennon wasn’t just going solo—he was actively rejecting the mythology of the Fab Four. The Beatles, in his mind, were a beautiful lie, a fantasy he had outgrown.
That disillusionment runs through the entirety of Plastic Ono Band. On “Working Class Hero,” Lennon exposes the empty promise of social mobility and strips away the romanticized lifestyle of rock stardom with brutal lines like, “Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV / And you think you’re so clever and classless and free / But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.” It comes across quite condescending, as if the middle class is ignorant to their surroundings, but I would argue that Lennon wants an angry reaction. He’s dangling himself as a keeper of power as bait. He’d rather be a martyr—thrown to the wolves if that’s what it takes for things to change—than be the face of a revolution (I see this song as a pseudo part two for “Revolution 1,” “Revolution 9” notwithstanding). Lennon may have what it takes to inspire reform, but he doesn’t want the responsibility of leadership that comes with it.
Furthering this idea comes my favorite song on the album, “I Found Out.” One of only three true rockers on the record, it’s a snarling, confrontational burst of fizzy guitars and unavoidable deadpan acceptance. While much of Plastic Ono Band wallows in grief and loss, “I Found Out” is absent of any and all soul searching. Lennon isn’t looking for meaning here—he’s walking down the street rolling his eyes, nettled by those around him. His delivery is crude, as if he’s looking for a fight, just dying for someone to throw the first punch so he can hit back with, “Some of you sitting there / With your cock in your hand / Don’t get you nowhere / Don’t make you a man.” The song’s most cutting moment comes in the second verse, though. Lennon sings, “I heard something ‘bout my Ma and my Pa / They didn’t want me so they made me a star.” It’s a devastating bit of braggadocio—Lennon twisting his own trauma into a bitter badge of honor and embracing the pain that forged him into the artist he is (or was, RIP).
Between the glimpses of Lennon’s more spirited side, songs like “Mother” take him at his most vulnerable. A lone funeral bell tolls four times before Lennon’s voice cuts through, raw and exposed: “Mother, you had me, but I never had you.” It’s an orphaned plea to his troubled upbringing, but as the song unfolds, his desperation turns to anguish. By the final moments, he’s not singing—he’s screaming, “Mama don’t go, Daddy come home!” Lennon’s emotional breakdown is deeply unsettling (that scream therapy is in full view here) as he connects to his inner child and vents his pent up aching for parental guidance. Then, as the album draws to an end, just when you think he’s found some closure—some catharsis—“My Mummy’s Dead” takes it all away again. Just 52 seconds long and set to the melody of “Three Blind Mice,” it feels like a ghost of childhood grief he still can’t shake. He repeats the title over and over, as if trying to convince himself he’s come to terms with it—but he never quite does.
If Plastic Ono Band kept this atmosphere of grief and self-importance throughout the entire tracklist, it would be absolutely insufferable. Even as it is, Lennon is pretentious in how he wraps up philosophy and global issues into hopeful little bows, but buried beneath his grief and bitterness (and maybe an inch or two of arrogance) is something more profound: hope. “Hold On” is filled with gentle reassurances to himself and Yoko, a reminder that even in the darkest times, they will always have each other to draw strength from. “Love” is as soft and tender a ballad as Lennon has ever written. Made up of just a piano and an acoustic guitar, he laments about the purity of real connection, providing a beautiful definition of what love is to him. Love is feeling. Love is giving. Love is living. Love is reaching. “Love” is therapeutic, healing and the track I return to most often for its impassioned message.
Unsurprisingly, when Plastic Ono Band was released in December 1970, it wasn’t an immediate commercial juggernaut. It was too raw—too confessional for the hippies that wanted “Love” and nothing else. Lennon himself would never make another record quite like this. His follow-up, Imagine, would retain some of the soul-searching while softening the edges, replacing the innate nerve of his debut with utopian idealism instead. In a way, that makes sense—Plastic Ono Band was an album that needed to happen only once, an exorcism that Lennon had to experience in order to move forward. It remains a singular achievement—a document of one man’s emotional reckoning, preserved in all its beautiful, messy, imperfect humanity. Plastic Ono Band isn’t an easy listen, but the truth rarely is.
Gavyn Green is one of Paste’s music interns and a music industry major at Drexel University. His work has appeared in publications including Paste and WXPN.
