The album John Lennon’s family thought should have never been made: “I had no idea”
Image is everything when you’re the most famous rock star in the world. As such, the decision by John Lennon to switch from Beatles bliss to full-frontal nudity was a shock, to say the least.
Of course, if there was anything bound to display his growing discontentment with the band most overtly, it would be to start producing solo albums, never mind stripping off for the cover of one of them. In retrospect, was it really any surprise that he quit the Fabs, shortly leading to their overall dissolution, just about a year later? Either people had terrible social cues back then, or just really had the blinkers on.
But, as with everything he ever did, Lennon knew exactly what he was doing to leave the world up in arms with the release of his first project with Yoko Ono, Unfinished Music No 1: Two Virgins, back in 1968. You can imagine the concept meeting between the two of them now, can’t you? We’re already going to be sending the audience into a spin with this avant-garde stuff, so why not just fully throw caution to the wind and get totally naked as well?
These were the best laid plans, anyway. Like any true hellbent pair of artists, you can be sure that they went through with it, too. Yet while they might have expected a certain amount of commercial and critical uproar, what Lennon may have been more blindsided by were the calls of disgust that came from, quite literally, his own house. In that sense, you do question what he thought was going to happen – you can’t release something like that without your family at least having their feathers slightly ruffled.
Lennon later confessed as much when he said: “Being naive in lots of ways, I had no idea I was going to get [a] slagging from the immediate family. I thought maybe somebody out there will say something, but I was making a statement.” It’s the tortured lament of the classic composer, in many ways: he just wants to perform and put himself out there, without thinking of any of the repercussions that that might entail. In fact, that idea was quite symbolic of the way Lennon lived out the rest of his life.
Naturally, he also had a thought or two in defence of that rather eye-opening cover. “It was as good as a song,” he argued. “It was better, you couldn’t say it better – pictures speak louder than words. There it was: beautiful statement.” We’ll maybe have to agree to disagree around the use of the word “beautiful”, but you understand the crux of his point. What is true art if it’s not something shocking, intriguing, utterly bizarre? As the leader of psychedelia, Lennon certainly thought so, but Two Virgins was simply taking that mantra one step further.
The influence of a visual artist in his life was obviously always going to be a major turning point in Lennon’s career. Ono was hardly the beacon of mainstream chart success, as The Beatles had been. But it was the crashing together of both these aspects that made Lennon truly unique in terms of his position in the world: yes, he was one of the most famous people to ever life, with the most seismic of popular images, but there was still enough creative spark left after all that time, where you still never quite knew what was going to come next.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.