The one John Lennon album that his label rejected: “This is garbage”
By the end of The Beatles’ run, any of them could pretty much do whatever they wanted. They could have easily faded into obscurity and started their quiet lives outside the limelight, but John Lennon was always bound to have more to say outside of the traditional love songs. And while his label managed to have some time for him to make abject noise with Yoko Ono on their experimental albums, they also had limits for how much they were willing to put up with from Lennon.
Then again, “put up with” might be the wrong turn of phrase here. Lennon was certainly capable of making great music outside of the Fab Four’s shadow, but it was always about doing what suited him at the moment. He may have been itching to make something heartfelt on Plastic Ono Band, but it wasn’t out of the question for him to make songs that were hard on the ears, like when he featured on Ono’s ‘Why’ and played along with her screaming that bordered on punk in its day.
If Lennon wanted to truly break off from The Beatles, he was going to need to get a proper band together. He may have been the one most reluctant to get back onstage, he had participated in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus with The Dirty Mac, so there was still room for him to work with a different band. And when he took the stage in Toronto, he had a virtual supergroup along for the ride.
Despite only playing together for a few hours, hearing Lennon jam alongside Eric Clapton and Klaus Voorman at the Toronto Peace Festival felt like the first time he was unchained from his old group. Not every song was exactly played perfectly and there are a few times where he starts to drift off-key or sounds strung out, but his version of ‘Cold Turkey’ from this version does a job at rivalling the studio version.
While Apple Records was more than happy to have any product as the Fabs were fracturing, not every fan was excited to hear what was coming up. Once the American market got ahold of the record and realised that they had been given one half of a live album and pieces of Ono shouting in between takes, Lennon had to fight to get his record out to the public.
“They said, ‘This is garbage, we’re not going to put it out with her screaming on one side and you doing this sort of live stuff.’”
john lennon
When discussing the record later, Lennon said that Capital Records refused to put out the record at the time, saying, “We tried to put it out on Capitol, and Capitol didn’t want to put it out. They said, ‘This is garbage, we’re not going to put it out with her screaming on one side and you doing this sort of live stuff.’ And they just refused to put it out. But we finally persuaded them that, you know, people might buy this. Of course, it went gold the next day.”
It’s not like Lennon didn’t put love and care into the package, either. Whereas a lot of the experimental albums sounded like they were thrown together with different pieces of memorabilia from Lennon and Ono’s time together, their decision to put a calendar in the packaging with the album was an inspired idea, even if it did make the album a lot more difficult to ship.
But the fact that the calendar was in there spoke volumes about where Lennon’s mind was at the time. This was the start of a new beginning for him, and even if not everything was perfect right out of the gate on this record, he knew that he had to move on to other things if he wanted to keep his artistic integrity.
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