“Banned here”: The John Lennon album cover censored by the United States
John Lennon was always one to advocate for free expression in art. Even though he may have been forced to censor himself during the days of The Beatles, he was free to do whatever he wanted once he decided to let his freak flag fly with Yoko Ono during his solo career. While it’s understandable why some people might not have wanted to see the former Beatle in the buff on Two Virgins, Lennon was furious when one iconic moment of his solo career was forbidden from being shown.
Going through his albums, though, there was never anything that could have been deemed outright offensive. As much as people may have liked the idea of nabbing Lennon for speaking his mind and accusing him of having the power to sway a US election, going after the graphic design of Imagine or the image of him standing sitting underneath a tree on Plastic Ono Band is downright laughable.
Once Lennon started noticing that he had a platform for making a stand, he knew that he could use it for good when working on Some Time In New York City. After all, he had become a transplant of the Big Apple for years now, and it was about time that he turned his voice up as loud as he could when campaigning for causes like the freeing John Sinclair or standing up for the rights of women.
But when authorities first saw the album’s cover, they were absolutely appalled. In addition to the cartoon-style animations on the entire design, which were laid out like a newspaper, people had more to say about the way that Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon were depicted dancing next to each other.
This was nothing new for Lennon, though. He had already name-checked Mao in ‘Revolution’ and Nixon in ‘Gimme Some Truth’, but given that both of them were dancing completely naked, this was too far over the line for people, eventually pulling the cover despite it not showing any offensive material.
When talking about getting beaten down by the label, Lennon was furious that he couldn’t express himself properly, saying, “You see how they banned the picture here. Yoko made this beautiful poster: Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon dancing naked together, you see? And the stupid retailers stuck a gold sticker over it that you can’t even steam off. At least you could steam off that Beatles [butcher] cover.”
And it’s not hard to see why Lennon was pissed off, either. The whole point behind the album was to capture a point in time, and even when he was being brutally honest about the way that he felt, the fact that he was being censored for something that suggested someone being naked was ridiculous.
But that kind of controversy came with the territory for Lennon. He could have spent the rest of his life trying to keep his head down and make whimsical tunes like Paul McCartney did, but if he felt he needed to stand up and say what needed to be said, he was never going to mince his words for anyone.
