Guns, drugs and a damaged wall: John Lennon’s chaotic sessions with Phil Spector
The year is 1974, and John Lennon has just come off one of the most tumultuous periods of his life. He has spent the better part of a decade being joined at the hip with Yoko Ono, but there is always something missing from their collaborations that he never ran into when working with The Beatles, and when they decide to separate, he starts becoming truly lost. As he prepares to go into the studio to cut a record of rock and roll songs to blow off some steam, Phil Spector sits patiently in the studio like a musical powder keg.
Then again, bringing Lennon back to his roots was something he sorely needed in the 1970s. A lot of his previous albums had been him airing out all of his grievances with the world, his upbringing, and his own frail state of mind, so if he wanted to get back into making traditional rock and roll, what better way than taking on some of the tunes that he got up to when playing in The Cavern all those years ago?
As it would turn out, though, bringing in Spector at this stage was practically the kiss of death. He had worked magic on Plastic Ono Band and given ‘Instant Karma’ that signature echo, but by the time Lennon entered the studio to record, Spector was practically frothing at the mouth, which isn’t what you want from the genius who’s supposed to be telling people what they should be playing.
It’s not like Lennon was that much better. He had been deep into his “lost weekend” away from Ono, and it wasn’t out of the question for him to be completely plastered throughout the recording of the tracks. Even when Paul McCartney showed up during this time, some of the material he made with his old mate still felt less like them reuniting as friends and more like them getting wasted and letting the tape roll.
The only real problem with the record came when Spector started bringing his firearms into the studio. Whereas most people were privy to some elicit substances being available all the time, guns and drugs never mix well, and when Spector fired off a gun in the middle of the studio, people started to realise how serious things were becoming.
While ducking in and out of the studio, Lennon’s friend Elliot Mintz said that none of them getting hurt was practically a miracle during that time, saying, “I wasn’t here (thank goodness) the night Spector famously fired a gun into the ceiling, but I saw plenty of other harrowing incidents. It’s amazing to me that nobody ended up seriously injured. Even more astonishing was that such a profoundly wonderful album — Rock ‘n’ Roll — came out on the other end of all that chaos and debauchery.”
Repairing damages to a few bullet holes in the wall was nothing, but after Spector made off with the tapes and refused to give them back, Lennon was left in limbo while still getting plastered out of his mind. And once fans got to hear it, it ended up sounding like a Lennon mixtape half the time, occasionally having a good song like ‘Slippin’ and Slidin” and ‘Stand By Me’ while also making tracks that could have very well been recorded at gunpoint like ‘Just Because’.
Even though having material by any former Beatle out in the world is good, Rock ‘n’ Roll still feels like peeking into a particularly dark chapter in Lennon’s life. He may have been having fun and getting up to the same rock and roll shenanigans as his rock contemporaries, but somewhere in this album is a cry for help from him, either from wanting to leave Spector or get back to Ono once more.
