‘Why’: The greatest experiment John Lennon and Yoko Ono ever made
The entire discourse regarding John Lennon and Yoko Ono has often been more than a little bit gross since The Beatles’ split. Since Ono has been blamed numerous times for breaking up the world’s favourite band, it was easy for everyone to consider everything that she did both before and after their split to be the most tasteless music ever created. If someone bothered to look a bit deeper beyond the typical rock and roll songs that Lennon was known for, there was a lot more to explore in the background.
Granted, it’s not like it’s hard to see where some of the naysayers were coming from. The idea of having Ono scream and moan over some of Lennon’s greatest songs at the Toronto Peace Festival was only ever going to make people angry, and it was going to be hard for someone who had only listened to the Fab Four’s hits to get on board going through the entire double album Fly.
But that was far from her only strength as a musician. She had a penchant for the avant-garde, but when she did manage to put songs together, she had a far softer touch than what everyone was used to. Even if someone couldn’t sit through any of their live shows, it was easy to listen to a track like ‘Sisters O Sisters’ and enjoy it as a nice bit of doo-wop style rock and roll in the vein of 1950s girl groups.
In fact, there are a lot of great moments to be found amid all of their collaborations. There are fantastic tunes on Some Time in New York City, Double Fantasy is considered one of the finest ways for Lennon to unintentionally close the book on his career, and yes, even some of the duo’s experimental projects manage to have a fair bit of great moments on them.
However, it’s important not to throw people into the deep end when it comes to their music. Anyone who’s thinking of trying something more daring would have probably run away in fear if the first thing they heard was something like Two Virgins, so it would be important to rope them in with something closer to rock and roll. And when talking about Lennon’s post-Beatles career, it didn’t get any heavier than on Plastic Ono Band.
While the album itself is fairly straightforward, Lennon is bluntly honest about everything on his mind throughout the last few years. In one album, he had to close the book on The Beatles and also pick himself apart in terms of his political views and the state of his mental health, but while ‘Well Well Well’ are raucous enough for keep fans happy, ‘Why’ by Yoko Ono is a far better version of what Lennon was trying to do.
Although Ono had a far more muted presence on Lennon’s album, there’s no questioning who’s playing guitar on her record when the distortion kicks in on ‘Why’. This is Lennon at his most feral, and since Ringo Starr was also there on drums, there’s a certain angry energy coming off of ‘Why’ that makes it feel like the lesser-known cousin of a song like ‘Helter Skelter’, complete with Ono screaming her brains out the same way that McCartney was.
So why do we give Macca a pass and not Ono? It might be because most people had a shared history with McCartney’s softer side, but since Ono would eventually write tunes like ‘Let Me Count the Ways’ and ‘Remember Love’, it’s easier to look at her voice the same way that many people looked at McCartney’s at the time, almost like it’s another instrument alongside the guitar, to the point where Lennon even claimed he wasn’t sure where her screaming started and his guitar ended.
No one needs to be listening to a song like ‘Why’ in the same way they listen to ‘Imagine’, but hearing something this nasty is one of the greatest gateways into songs that were a little noisier. And since many artists have made their careers out of getting a lot more beastly than Ono did here, she was certainly paving the way for where music was heading a few years later.
