“Insanity”: The 1968 album that made John Lennon hate his record label
There was no doubting the stardom of The Beatles when they emerged on the scene in the early 1960s.
The Fab Four were stars, not least John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who, with their widening grins and endless bank of original songwriting, were ready-made superstars for this bright new era. And they were up for it initially, soaking up every ounce of stardom their music was offering them.
But then for Lennon at least, things quickly changed. The more people universally loved him, the more he felt perennially alone and viewed the world from an isolated state of disillusion. Fame wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be, and the music industry wasn’t much better – the one place that would provide solace soon became a hidden trap for bureaucracy and corruption.
Lennon soon realised that with success came greed, and ultimately greed, was counterintuitive to the sort of artist he wanted to be. The simple vision of writing and releasing songs felt worlds away from the bureaucratic trap he found himself in at the tail end of The Beatles.
“When we came along there was only Decca, Philips and EMI who could really produce a record for you. You had to go through the whole bureaucracy to get into the recording studio. You were in such a humble position, you didn’t have more than 12 hours to make a whole album, which is what we did in the early days.”
There was a tinge of fondness to his memory of those days. While the big labels still ruled the roost, he acknowledged that at least him and The Beatles were given the opportunity. He believed that as the 1960s moved on and labels saw what was possible in music, largely at the hands of bands like The Beatles, they became money hungry and obsessed with success, to a point where they would overlook songs that could provide it.
He continued, “If you’re an unknown artist, you’re lucky to get an hour in a studio – it’s a hierarchy, and if you don’t have hits, you don’t get recorded again. And they control distribution. We tried to change that with Apple, but in the end, we were defeated. They still control everything.”
But Lennon didn’t see himself as immune from the bureaucracy. He felt like he too, had become a product being shipped by the labels themselves. Years of being put to the grindstone for the greater good of a label had hardened Lennon to a point where he saw through the bulllshit, and wondered if there was any good beyond the studio.
He felt the pinch even tighter when he tried to deviate from The Beatles in ‘68 and release a more daring project with Yoko Ono. His artistic difference was immediately shut down on the basis that he wasn’t painting by the numbers they had assigned and so came the sobering reminder that money comes before art.
“EMI killed our album Two Virgins because they didn’t like it,” he said, adding “With the last record they’ve censored the words of the songs printed on the record sleeve. Fucking ridiculous and hypocritical — they have to let me sing it but they don’t dare let you read it. Insanity.”
Lennon’s battles with labels, management and publishers would roll on for another decade, largely at the expense of his friendship with McCartney and thus proved what they were beginning to fear: that music and business simply didn’t work together.
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