The genre John Lennon couldn’t stand working on: “The people that surround it”
John Lennon didn’t want to be considered a snob whenever it came to his music.
He had certain standards of what he wanted out of his own songs, but he had a keen ear for all kinds of music that had some sort of passion behind it, rather than looking for whether or not everything was totally in tune. Lennon liked the idea of honesty in art, and while he could be vicious when it came to his own work, he was also more than happy to tear genres through the mud if he felt that they were being made for the wrong reasons.
Then again, it’s not like Lennon was outwardly looking for genres to hate on back in the day. His entire mantra for the second half of his career revolved around love and peace, and whenever he did get his fangs out, it was usually directed at someone that he had a specific problem with, be that Paul McCartney on ‘How Do You Sleep’ or going after his former manager Allen Klein when making ‘Steel and Glass’ later on in his career.
And given how he hung out with people like David Bowie and Elton John, it’s not like he was ever scared of trying something new. ‘The Starman’ and the British ‘Piano Man’ were used to taking chances and pulling from whatever genre they wanted to, but even if Lennon could find a place in their songs, he knew that rock and roll was always going to be the first love he always went back to.
It was never going to get any better for him than listening to people like Chuck Berry or Jerry Lee Lewis when he first heard them in Liverpool, but it’s not like The Beatles couldn’t stretch out. There were plenty of chords that they picked up on thanks to some of the jazz guitarists in the area, but when looking at the way that jazz looked down upon rock and roll, Lennon had a bit of a chip on his shoulder whenever it came to listening to that style of music.
The same could be said of classical music when Lennon first struck out on his own, saying, “There’s nobody I like all the stuff of including me or Beatles. I like bits and pieces. I don’t like the intellectual school of music same as I don’t like classical music or modern jazz for the same reasons. I don’t dislike modern jazz or classical music in general, but the people that surround it.” Even if the company wasn’t all that great, Lennon wasn’t opposed to making more ambitious tunes as well.
‘Because’ could easily hold up as a classical composition if it were played by an orchestra, and even when The Beatles made their more experimental tunes, there wouldn’t have been a song like ‘Michelle’ without picking up on a few of those jazz chords. The latter may have been a McCartney tune, but Lennon was still willing to give it a shot thanks to what he heard from people like Nine Simone.
But when you look at his solo career, the lion’s share of his songs all came back to the same rock and roll foundation. A lot of it came down to the way that he was articulating a lot of his songs, but when you listen to ‘Tight A$’, it’s hard to think of a better way for Lennon to get his point across than to go back to the same kind of rock and roll foundation that Buddy Holly and Little Richard would have been proud of.
He could still make more ambitious songs when he wanted to, but his choice to wear rock and roll on his sleeve was more of a statement than anything else. His mission was to prove to all of the jazz and classical snobs that he could make something important with only a few chords, and he certainly succeeded considering how many of his tunes are still echoing throughout rock and roll history.
