“Choked up”: The John Lennon song he thought Eric Clapton screwed up
John Lennon always had a specific image in his head for what he wanted his music to sound like half the time. He was far from the greatest guitarist to ever put his hands on the fretboard, but if he knew the mechanics of what made one of his songs work, it didn’t take him long to lay it down on guitar or get the right person for the job to work with him. But for all of the great guest stars on his records like Elton John, George Harrison, and Billy Preston, even Lennon could admit when someone didn’t have the right feel for the song.
Granted, if Lennon were to test someone out in his later career, he had a much better handle on it than when he first started out. He was known to be absolutely ruthless in the days when The Beatles were nothing but a great rock and roll bar band, but that nasty version of Lennon was never going to get anywhere if he simply yelled his way into getting what he wanted out of his session players.
Nor did he really need to, either. Lennon was one to foster creativity compared to Paul McCartney’s perfectionist tendencies, and it was worth it to have someone like Ringo Starr play what he felt was right on ‘God’ rather than looking over his shoulder and making sure that every note that he played was exactly right for whatever moment the music was in.
If there was ever a time for him to be a bit more critical of the sessions players, though, it would have been when he returned to music with Double Fantasy. This would have been the first time that he stepped into the studio in nearly half a decade, so he wasn’t going to roll over and work with any other New York musician who was there to collect a paycheck. Although Tony Levin added some brilliant bass to many of the tracks, one of the biggest missed opportunities was not getting the Cheap Trick tracks approved.
Since they broke out on the scene with Live At Budokan, Cheap Trick had been known as the American Beatles due to their knack for hooks, so getting guitarist Rick Nielsen and drummer Bun E Carlos for ‘Cleanup Time’ felt like a no-brainer. Although the tapes didn’t end up working out in the mix and got shelved for a few years, Nielsen remembered that Lennon was already impressed by what he was hearing.
Compared to some of his other sessions, Nielsen remembered Lennon saying that what they were doing eclipsed one of Eric Clapton’s finest performances on his records, recalling, “I was in the studio, playing. And John looked at [producer] Jack Douglas and said: ‘God, I wish I’d had Rick on ‘Cold Turkey’. Clapton choked up.”
But that shouldn’t really be a slam against Clapton as much as it is a difference of musical personalities. Nielsen was far more reckless in his playing than what ‘Slowhand’ sounded like in his prime, and if he were given a song that was as raw and unhinged as ‘Cold Turkey’, chances are he could have delivered the kind of solo that was far more tasteful for the moment than traditional blues licks.
Then again, that was all down to Lennon thinking outside the box all the time. He could have easily played an erratic solo himself, but towards the end of his career, he started to look at some of his fellow musicians the same way that many artists look at paints before putting them on the canvas.
