The 1970 album Roger Waters said would always be “in my top five”
‘I don’t really have an opinion on the matter’; those are nine words that neither John Lennon nor Roger Waters have ever uttered.
Taking his cue from the bespectacled Beatle, for better or for worse, the former Pink Floyd man has made use of the platform that rock ‘n’ roll iconology has afforded him with a fierce vigour. As he says himself, “As far as my contemporaries, I am monumentally surprised how fucking scared my fellow musicians are to stick their heads out.”
That quote could just as easily have been proclaimed by Lennon. The Liverpudlian firmly believed that he could have an impact beyond pretty little tunes. And yet, musically, it has often been dainty melodies that have attracted both Lennon and Waters. In his solo material, Waters frequently gravitates towards humble, acoustic folk songs, even explaining, “There aren’t many rock ‘n’ roll acts I would ever listen to or care about”.
After the hectic fall-out of The Beatles’ break up, Lennon felt a similar way. After years of living in a whirlwind, the monumental pause of saying farewell to the Fab Four left him reconciling life in a holistic manner. He was lost, and felt that he had been for years. His whole life even.
The result was 1970’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. The cover art did a lot to explain the contents: Lennon and Yoko Ono perched against a tree, relaxing/thinking. In many ways, this is how the record sounds; it is a springlike piece of contemplation.
The pair had recently embarked on a programme of ‘Primal Scream’ therapy led by the psychologist Arthur Janov. His assessment of their psychological damage was striking. “The level of his pain was enormous,” Janov said of Lennon. “He was almost completely nonfunctional. He couldn’t leave the house, he could hardly leave his room.”
His assessment continued, “This was someone the whole world adored, and it didn’t change a thing. At the center of all that fame and wealth and adulation was just a lonely little kid.” Lennon’s status might have been unprecedented, but the lusciously reflective and hopeful record that it spawned was a lot more resonant.
Evidently, Waters loved it. The album played into what he views as music’s pinnacle. “I think great singer-songwriter is the best part of the musical spectrum,” he told MSN Live. In many ways, this ties to his belief that a musician should “stick their heads out”, there is nothing to hide behind in this musical vein. That naked vulnerability poured out from Plastic Ono Band like sap from a tapped tree from the get-go.
The opening track, ‘Mother’, is perhaps the most personal of Lennon’s entire career. The tune was a direct result of Janov’s exorcism-like screaming therapy. And Lennon had plenty inside to scream about. As Yoko Ono told Uncut: “It’s just a matter of breaking the wall that’s there in yourself and come out and let it all hang out to the point that you start crying.”
Ono continued, “He was going back to the days when he wanted to scream, ‘Mother’. He was able to go back to that childhood, that memory.”
The stirring composition is a touching wail of catharsis as Lennon laments the loss of his mother when she was struck by a drunk-driving off-duty policeman when he was only young and the fact his father continued a life at sea thereafter, leaving him in the care of his aunt. All of this was wrought out in a song that saw Lennon go back to his roots in more ways than one.
As he told Rolling Stone in an interview upon its release: “I’ve always liked simple rock. I was influenced by acid and got psychedelic, like the whole generation, but really, I like rock and roll, and I express myself best in rock.” So, he stripped it all back.
That’s the crux of the record; the music is there to support the extolling of Lennon’s inner feelings rather than to play into a fad. This deeply appealed to Waters, who has always been invested in finding ways to turn his angst into aural joys. He saw this 1970 classic as pretty much the pinnacle of that approach. As the Pink Floyd bassist put it himself: “I think John Lennon’s first solo album will always be in my top five.”
“It knocked my socks off,” he proclaimed on another occasion. “I don’t remember where I was, but I can remember it clear as a bell. The outro of ‘Mother’ is amazing. The sonic quality on that record was like listening to [The Band’s] Music From Big Pink or something.”
He concluded. “Those records, when you listen to it and say, ‘That’s so new and fresh and different and brilliant’.” And then, evidently, they stay with you forevermore.
In fact, it even stayed with Lennon for a long time after, with the former Beatle commenting that it was “the best thing [he’d] ever done”.
