If I’m recalling the story correctly, a very young nephew of the great Lester Bangs once told him sagely that “Heroes are for zeroes.” This is a cynical way of looking at things, sure, but I can apply it to most of my heroes, and John Lennon isn’t even one of them.
I never put the hippest and most outspoken of the Fab Four on a pedestal, which saved me the effort of having to knock him off again, and I have no idea what became of the only album I ever owned by him (1975’s best-of compilation Shaved Fish) nor do I much care. I can count on one hand the number of songs by Lennon the solo artist that I love, and philosophically I’m inclined to dislike all of the naïve and even disingenuous attitudes he struck (confused hippie political agitator, dim-bulb idealist and peace activist, “happy househusband,” etc.) after leaving the Beatles.
Hell, I never even liked “Imagine,” which makes me a monster I know, but something about the way Lennon asks us to “imagine no possessions” and then rather self-righteously tacks on “I wonder if you can” when he was happily collecting grand pianos, jukeboxes, guitars, homes, additions to homes, expensive boats, dairy cows, and the like just plain irks me. I was never much of a fan of “Give Peace a Chance”—he should have asked Neville Chamberlain how that worked out with Adolf Hitler—either. And that goes double for “Woman Is the Nigger of the World,” which I imagine led many a person of color to snigger down her sleeve (or worse) whenever it got played.
Anyway. Live Peace in Toronto 1969 captured Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band in rather odd circumstances; Lennon agreed to play the Toronto festival, which was organized around the concept of a rock’n’roll revival, at the last moment, and after George Harrison declined to sign on as lead guitarist Lennon hastily lined up Eric Clapton, bassist Klaus Voormann, and Alan White (later of Yes) on drums. In accordance with the spirit of the festival the Plastic Ono Band opened up with three hoary old chestnuts before meandering into Lennon’s solo material and then (disastrously) shutting things down (to put it mildly) with two Yoko Ono ditties. The resulting recording, not surprisingly, does not hang together a’tall; the LP’s B-side is all Ono and no plastic, and as one critic noted, “No wonder you see many used copies of the LP with worn A-sides and clean, unplayed B-sides.” And that was after he bemoaned Yoko’s “wailing, pitchless, brainless banshee vocalizing.” It should be noted that she gobbles all over “Cold Turkey” as well.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those who think Yoko “ruined” John; he was an adult and a creative artist and everything he did as an adult and a creative artist was on his shoulders. I’m not much of a fan of Ono’s, although I am of the opinion that her rip-snorting version of “Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)” is the cacophonous highlight of this rather odd live souvenir. On the other hand, “John, John (Let’s Hope for Peace)” nearly sinks the LP and makes me hope for atomic war. The song would be unlistenable at even a third its length and to those who point to Ono as a founding figure of No Wave I can only reply that I never cared much for No Wave to begin with. Seriously, somebody has to take the fall for early Sonic Youth, so why not frame poor Yoko? Arty rock noise, gak!
As I implied in the previous graf, I ain’t crazy about what the Plastic Ono Band does with the three oldies it plays; Lennon may have cut his teeth playing primal American rock’n’roll in rainy Hamburg, but as he proved on his rather desultory 1975 oldies’ LP Rock ‘n’ Roll, his solo efforts just don’t jump and shout. On “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Money,” and “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” Lennon manifestly fails to shoot off vocal sparks. “Money” staggers along like it has a spavined leg due to the drumming of White, while “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” comes up short in the dizzying ecstasy department. And “Blue Suede Shoes” doesn’t quite make the grade either, because in the end run Clapton and the boys substitute heavy for light, and these songs should dance rather than plod.
“Yer Blues,” which dates back to Lennon’s tenure in the Beatles, is just swell; Clapton’s ‘eavy touch is very much called for on this one, and Lennon sounds genuinely impassioned. As I noted before, I don’t find “Cold Turkey” convincing and Lennon’s vocals sound strained, but it’s just fine and dandy as a piece of music even with Ono’s literal gobbling. Eric Clapton to the rescue! Meanwhile, perhaps the best thing about “Give Peace a Chance” is the way Lennon counts off the song in German. Nay, but seriously, it’s okay if you can get beyond its naively muddleheaded sentiment—we all say we want to give peace a chance, but in the end too many of us will always be ready to patriotically cheer on the latest war—which I can because it’s a great sing-along and I love the way Clapton cranks out the main riff.
I’m one of the largely silent minority who think John Lennon never really found his footing as a major artist after leaving the Beatles. He recorded a few very great songs, a lot of psychologically fascinating curiosities, and too much of the maudlin and (I believe) disingenuously self-mythologizing dreck he bequeathed us on 1980’s Double Fantasy. Proof of this lies in the fact that 1975’s Shaved Fish seems padded, and it was only a single LP. And he largely fell silent after 1975, and not because he decided to become a househusband as the Lennon-Ono myth machine would have it. No, he fell silent because he had nothing to say. Like so many other geniuses of his generation, his genius dried up. I suspect his tragic murder will always blinker his millions of ardent fans to this unpalatable truth, and that’s okay. I can only see things the way I see them, and let others do the same.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C-
