John Lennon - Rock 'N' POLL

"Stand By Me"

some missed opportunities here....

I fell down a youtube rabbit hole tonight and was reacquainted with his slowed down "Bony Moronie" and, for a brief moment, it sounded like the best thing I'd heard all week. Sorta have to vote for it now.

Would like to see more views on this, I've always dug the production on this record.

Otm. This album so much better than you would think. Probably first knew "Stand by Me" from this record and given the overexposure of the original in films and ads probably prefer this version. Did he ever revive his early raw raspy rock and roll voice again? Never looked into the other related tracks the Morris Levy released that didn't make it onto the official album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72D3dPnjtcI

haven't heard this album in probably twenty five years, is this the same version of 'ya ya' that's on walls and bridges?

No, it's a full version with his studio band (same band as on Walls and Bridges).

Weird. I just listened to the A side last week. Better listen to Side B now.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I was thinking about this kinda forgotten record a few weeks ago during the Neil Young polling, and thinking that this is the record that The Shocking Pinks could have been but wasn't. I've never owned a copy, so I've forgotten what many of these sound like. The Band's Moondog Matinee too.

Possibly taken around the time this record was being made:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/4b55f49ea7fceb86ebf208d99e39362a/tumblr_mpr6afGrZ81qz8ca1o1_400.jpg

A young Bobby Gillespie in front?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Should have voted for "Peggy Sue" instead.

is it a known 'thing' that the photo is nicked from this

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/108/307572648_f1b30e1fc3.jpg

or was it just something people did a lot in the mid 70s?

That photo was actually taken by Jürgen Vollmer in Hamburg in the early 60s. The blurry people are Paul, George, and Stu Sutcliffe.

Finally checking out this record after a lifetime of hearty skepticism, derived maybe from a capsule review at the back of a big Beatles collector guidebook or something like that, perused as a kid. It's... pretty fun! Feels very much like Pussy Cats! if with less dementia lurking around the edges - there's nothing so far that threatens to go off the rails the way "Subterranean Homesick Blues" does on that record. But aside from a certain tinniness of sound (which might partially be my crappy speakers and stuff at the moment) it's very listenable and kinda loose and goofy. Nothing comes close to threatening to become the definitive version of any of the tunes, but he also steers comfortably wide of just doing 50s-style performances, or smoothing them all out into a 70s "house style" - each one is its own weird thing even if the Spector and quasi-Spectorian touches do give it a unity. I'm digging it.

Probably my only real gripe would be that it'd be fun to have more obscurities and fewer smash hits to cover... part of the charm of Run Devil Run (a profoundly different record in many ways) is watching McCartney rifle through his mental songbook for things he's got a hankering to play today, with seemingly no concern for a recognizable lineup of tracks on the back cover. You have to figure John Lennon if anything had more b-sides and flop singles dear to his heart, things that would pop into his 35-year-old head in the shower. Oh well.

It kinda tickles me a little that McCartney is meant to be the "conservative" Beatle, yet here is Lennon already indulging in nostalgia in his mid-30's and making a rock'n'roll covers album with Phil Spector.

I was always under the impression that it was contract-filler, or the conclusion of a "Come Together" lawsuit or something. But generally, agreed. What could be interesting, if requiring some work of translation, would be a comparison with End of the Century, or the Ramones' whole deal, which naturally comes from a sorta different relationship with these old-time rock and roll records. Joey Ramone was more than a decade younger than John Lennon - though Johnny was only five and a half years younger than George Harrison! An eternity in pop terms, to be sure. Still, I wonder if they're closer together in their approach to the Fifties than any of them are to Showaddywaddy.

Man, that wonky "Ya Ya" was fun. Depending on when specifically it was cut, I'd say "there's a Nilsson influence right there" or "now that there shows why these two guys got along."

Well, the album was kinda both a contract filler and a means of "getting rid" of the three Morris Levy-owned songs Lennon had to record as a result of the 'Come Together' lawsuit, but he could have ended up putting out those covers as B-sides or as an EP or something. Here, not only did he decide to record a whole album of rock'n'roll covers, but only two Levy owned songs were on it ('You Can't Catch Me' and 'Ya Ya') - a third one was recorded but didn't make it on the album, and Levy ended up suing Lennon. Not just that, but it's pretty well known that Lennon was critical of McCartney's solo approach, saying he preferred "rock'n'roll" to McCartney's tendencies to do medleys and reprises and multi-part songs like 'Little Lamb Dragonfly'.

This album in today's terms would be like if someone who released their first record in 2002 put out a covers record this year of songs that they dug from 1996-2001.

that album sounds like serious ILM-bait btw

But more seriously, thanks for the info! That's helpful. And yeah, I was thinking above of his particular brand of rockist purism... what's funny is that for all that, on this "rock 'n' roll record" at least he really does very little "straight" rock by whatever standard. Everything's either a little too sparse or a little too larded up with horns and echo and bits of 70s shamble. His voice is the main anchor back to the guy who covered "Twist and Shout, "Money," "Slow Down" et cetera, a decade before.

Little off topic, but how much playing did John do on his post Plastic Ono Band albums? He's a really underrated rhythm guitarist and I've always had the impression he hated his own playing.

this is a v goofy album, it doesn't really "rock" very much but it's a fun bit of fluff