Ezra Furman on the most underrated John Lennon album: “One of the greatest things I’ve ever heard”
The concept of every Ezra Furman song is about trying to reach something deeper than just a traditional pop track. Any rock band can put together the kind of disposable tune that anyone can relate to, but tearing out a piece of your heart and putting it down on paper for the world to see is a much more challenging process. It’s even more difficult when that same song has to connect with people, but Furman thought that one of the most raw records she had ever heard came from John Lennon on Plastic Ono Band.
Out of all The Beatles’ solo careers, though, Lennon’s was always destined to be more artistic. While Paul McCartney could be counted on to make whimsical tunes no matter where he found himself, Lennon wrote lyrics the same way that most people write in their diaries every day, with each song chronicling a struggle he was dealing with.
And since the group he had led since he first started playing music had broken up, Plastic Ono Band gave him a lot to unpack. But instead of just focusing on The Beatles and how the breakup hurt him, every track is one piece of his inner psyche that he had kept hidden away from the world.
‘Mother’ is Lennon’s cry for help to his mother for not being there for him, and ‘Working Class Hero’ is one of the most scathing assessments of the class system, where everyone is expected to do despicable things if it means that they have one inkling of a shot at the top of the food chain.
For Furman, that kind of vulnerability has led to the project being a tad bit under the radar by the mainstream, telling Line of Best Fit, “I know the Plastic Ono Band album could not be said to be underrated; it’s one of the more famous records in history, but I still get the feeling that it’s something that’s underrated, it’s literally one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard.”
Despite being an album by one of the most celebrated artists of the time, Furman argued that part of the reason why it works is because of how well it balances both the light and the dark sides of him, explaining, “It’s really bare-bones, and that’s so effective, but you couldn’t pull it off if you didn’t have his songwriting ability, it’s my gold standard of raw music.”
Given where Furman took her career in her solo work and with the Harpoons, it still has the same balance that Lennon was aiming for. Lennon may be the better songwriter, but an album like Transangelic Exodus is coming from someone who internalised tracks like ‘Love’ just as much as ‘Mother’ and tried to toe that line between chaos and sonic beauty.
While Lennon did eventually reach the top of the charts later in his solo career, Plastic Ono Band is still one of the outliers in his catalogue because it is so raw and beautiful at the same time. There wasn’t anything on the record that constituted a sure-fire hit, but the earnestness and honesty behind every tune are half the reason why indie rock is so open to sharing emotions today.
