The songs John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote for Oz Magazine
John Lennon always had a political edge to him. Out of all the Beatles, it was Lennon who had directly pointed the finger at the socio-political playground of the world the most. Lennon was also known to get involved in a charity single or two whenever it felt appropriate.
One of the fascinating instances of this came in 1971, just a year after the Beatles had split. In August of that year, Lennon and Yoko Ono joined a march through London. They were demonstrating their support of the IRA and the underground magazine Oz, which had been embroiled in an obscenity trial surrounding their “school kids” issue.
Oz had invited 20 schoolchildren to edit an issue of the magazine. However, this created the misunderstanding that the issue in question was intended for children. Given that the issue featured several X-rated images, including one of a sexualised Rupert Bear, the magazine was the victim of the UK’s Obscene Publications Squad and incurred several expensive court fees.
Lennon and Ono had joined the protest against Oz’s prosecution and helped in the way that only they could by writing some charity singles to help out with the court fees. The tracks in question were ‘God Save Us’ and ‘Do the Oz’. Lennon said of the former’s title, “First of all, we wrote it as ‘God Save Oz’, you know, ‘God save Oz from it all,’ but then we decided they wouldn’t really know what we were talking about in America, so we changed it back to ‘us’.”
The B-side to ‘God Save Oz’, which was called ‘Do the Oz’, referenced the childhood dance the Hokey-Cokey with the lyrics “Pull your left wing in, and put your right wing out. Do the Oz, baby. Spread it all about”. Yoko later noted: “John and I actually once were thinking, ‘Why don’t we create a dance, you know, a dance movement, and put the instructions of how to do this new dance on the back of an album.’ And he started to roll on the floor, trying to find a unique kind of action. But it just didn’t happen. It was a bit difficult.”
Unfortunately, the single failed to chart in both the US and the UK, so in hindsight, it may have been better for Lennon and Ono to merely donate the proceeds of one of Lennon’s forthcoming standard singles to the cause of the magazine. There’s an element of Lennon perhaps cashing in here, which does not put him in the greatest of lights.
As for the magazine itself, Felix Dennis, Richard Neville and Jim Anderson initially received 15 months in prison after being found not guilty of conspiracy but guilty of two lesser offences. However, the conviction was eventually overruled as it came to light that the judge had been misdirecting the jury throughout. Oz went out of publication in 1973.
