The 1974 song that humiliated John Lennon: “I regret having to be in that position”
There aren’t many moments in The Beatles’ career that haven’t received a verbal beatdown from John Lennon.
From day one, he was always critical of everything the Fab Four were involved in, but it’s hard to say how much of it was genuine and what was simply bitterness at having to give up a part of his life for the rest of the world’s amusement. Even if he had some reservations about people complimenting tunes like ‘It’s Only Love’ and ‘She Loves You’, that kind of resentment didn’t suddenly stop during his solo career, either.
But Lennon didn’t exactly get off on the right foot during his solo career, either. While he was still in the glow of love with Yoko Ono, his first experimental albums with his other half aren’t necessarily listenable in the same way that people throw on Abbey Road. This was something deliberately unfinished and cacophonous, but even when Lennon came back to the group to work on albums like Abbey Road, he was slapped with a lawsuit before he could even make a new song.
The irony was difficult to ignore. Lennon had spent much of his career championing rock and roll’s pioneers, openly acknowledging the influence artists like Chuck Berry had on The Beatles. Yet one of those same influences would end up dragging him into a legal battle that shaped the direction of his early solo career.
Since ‘Come Together’ was already based on ‘You Can’t Catch Me’ by Chuck Berry, Lennon was sued for copyright infringement, with the case settling on him recording an album of covers with the proceeds going to Berry’s estate. While that seems like an easy fix, nothing about a studio environment with Phil Spector was going to be considered laid-back and breezy by any stretch.
While Spector was legitimately insane before any of his legal troubles began, he did produce great results when working on Let It Be, but Lennon remembered the sessions for Rock ‘n’ Roll being gruelling. Since this was also during his “lost weekend” away from Ono, you can practically hear him getting more and more depressed, realising that his love is across the country and not giving him the time of day.
Even if half of the album has some great moments, ‘Ya Ya’ was never really supposed to happen. Lennon had worked up a mock version of the tune on his last album, Walls and Bridges, but since that was toeing up too close to the line since the proper covers album wasn’t out yet, he was forced to include a proper version of the tune on the album to cover up for his latest mistake.
What began as a legal obligation increasingly felt like a creative burden. Rather than revisiting the songs that had inspired him out of pure affection, Lennon was working under pressure, with contractual requirements dictating at least part of the album’s existence.
Lennon doesn’t do a bad job covering the tune, but he admitted that he wasn’t grinning from ear to ear when it came time to record it, saying, “‘Ya Ya’ was a contractual obligation to Morris Levy as a result of the court case. It was a humiliation, and I regret having to be in that position, but I did it.” Then again, the hardest part is knowing the wholesome story behind everything that was stomped into pieces.
Despite not seeing his father for most of his Beatle years, the Walls and Bridges version of ‘Ya Ya’ features Julian Lennon playing drums with his father in the studio. Since Julian reminisces on this time as some of the best moments he ever had with his old man, seeing it be taken to court puts a strange black mark on everything that doesn’t really need to be there.
But looking at how Lennon dealt with it, it’s not like Rock ‘n’ Roll was meant to be among the Imagines of the world. This was the epitome of an album that an artist is forced to make, and while pieces of the lost weekend sound fun, you can’t help but listen to the record and realise that those years of boozing are starting to catch up with him.
Viewed in retrospect, Rock ‘n’ Roll occupies an unusual place in Lennon’s catalogue. It lacks the artistic ambition of his greatest solo records, but it offers a revealing snapshot of a turbulent period in his life. Beneath the covers and contractual obligations lies an artist caught between nostalgia, personal upheaval and professional frustration, trying to reconnect with the music that first made him fall in love with rock and roll.
