The one album John Lennon couldn’t stand listening to: “Just throw this away”
There is no shortage of Beatles classics that haven’t received the critical lambasting of John Lennon.
He was tremendously proud to be a part of one of the greatest bands to have ever walked the Earth, but given how many times he felt that they didn’t hit the mark, he wasn’t exactly saying that every single thing they did was absolutely perfect, either. There were a lot of sore spots throughout their discography, and Lennon was the first to say that there were more than a few of his own tracks that he felt deserved to go in the trash before anyone else had even heard them.
But it’s not like Lennon couldn’t tell when he had hit on something brilliant. Despite not thinking it held up over time, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ is still a masterpiece that deserves to be celebrated as a landmark in recorded history, but Lennon felt much more connected with songs that were from the heart. Plastic Ono Band was more rough around the edges by comparison, but he remembered saying exactly what he needed to say about his time in therapy on every single track.
When he started working with Yoko Ono, though, things started to turn a different corner. Everyone already had little patience for when he started working on his experimental albums like Two Virgins and Life With the Lions, but Some Time in New York City was the straw that broke the camel’s back. They were clearly becoming a bit more destructive to each other from an artistic perspective, and Ono felt that all they needed was a break from Lennon after a while.
And despite Lennon not wanting to break things off, some of the best songs from his middle period are a perfect example of what kind of problems he was facing. He was completely lost without the love of his life on Mind Games, and Walls and Bridges was him trying to make sense of what life was like in sunny California as he made his way through the most debauchery any Beatle ever went through.
That period isn’t looked back on as the most constructive part of Lennon’s life, but it took him a while before he was even ready to face what he had written during that time, with Lennon saying, “I couldn’t stand to listen [to it]. [I said] ‘just throw this away’, and they said: ‘Hey, it’s all right.’ So I said: ‘It’s all right. Oh it’s not bad at all. I quite like some of it myself. OK, let’s put it out.’” And even if it’s not the best album he made, it is one of the most interesting pieces of his history.
When looking through a lot of the rock and roll tunes, you could tell that he was having a blast working with some new talent. Getting Elton John and Harry Nilsson to help work on the record meant that the whole album had a slight party atmosphere, which was a breath of fresh air after going through years and years of Lennon preaching practices on every single album he made. But underneath everything was the real Lennon, and he was going through his fair share of issues.
Despite ‘#9 Dream’ sounding absolutely immaculate, a lot of the rest of the record has some heavier lyrics than most people realise. ‘Going Down On Love’ already invoked his old Beatles hit ‘Help!’, and when looking at the bookend of the album ‘Nobody Loves You When You’re Down and Out’, you can tell that he’s still missing Yoko and would do anything to atone for what he had done.
While he did eventually get forgiveness and made Double Fantasy about them being back together again, it wasn’t like Lennon could ever hide from his emotions. He was a consummate artist in every sense of the word, and he was going to do everything within his power to document his feelings, even if it meant having a few dark chapters that he didn’t want to go back to.
