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Like a good drug addict you are very aware of the situation yet can't stop it because it feels damn good.You get beaten down and shown that not everything is as beautiful as you thought. "Now that I showed you what I been throughDon't take nobody's word what you can do"At 8:30pm after a long day at work I turn on my reading light, lay on my bed, mp3 on hand, headphones on, and play this album for the first time.From the first funeral bells you already know this is NOT just another album. Here I am what am I supposed to do now. Yet you find hope because there is substance in truth and amidst all, love was indeed the answer."The Dream is over"I wake up and realize that what seemed days was only 40 minutes. You slowly find yourself sinking down, just like that famous scene from Trainspotting you get into a state of profound awareness. You get hit and dragged to the floor like garbage.
Of note is that, through all of the pain, he still celebrates Love. What an album. I absolutely love the proto-punk sounds of Well Well Well and I Found Out. I love Imagine as well, but this is my favorite Lennon solo album because of the vulnerability and openness here. Lennon strips belief down to himself (and Yoko). For my money, John Lennon's best solo album is Plastic Ono Band.
In addition, Lennon was finally coming to terms with the death of his mother Julia and his father's abandonment of him when he was, I believe, three years old. It's hard to imagine a current artist baring his or her soul like this. It is so raw and emotional that you do feel a little guilty listening to it. He wants to feel his pain and not mask it with substances or belief systems. The production is also less pronounced and lets the listener feel the music. This was a man dealing with the break up of the band he founded.
The lyrics are cathartic and amazingly open.
john's dark,in your face,brilliant album is better now than it was when it was released in "71" because it takes on a haunting quality,the fact that lennon died violently in the darkness of nighttime new york seems to coordinate with this album.i love this album,john scratched a lot of hurt,and heartaches,on the plastic of that album.the lyrics are words from a master composer,the songs are unforgetable.
Often attributed as the post-Beatles most vibrant work, Lennon's simply composed, consciously unhinged rock-psych excursion does sound relatively weak alongside the energy he put in, and would largely fall flat if not for some charisma and some production intuition.
Not to say it's not great music, because it certainly is a FANTASTIC album-- but it's so REAL, that it's hard to NOT be affected by it. I agree with the other reviewers who say that it's a bit sacrilegious to alter the original. He was always my favorite Beatle, and I always loved "Imagine," and admired him. I can listen to these songs over and over again, and feel like I'm there with John, hearing the raw truth of what he was going through at that time in his life. One of my first memories is of being in my father's apartment, at age 6, in 1988, listening to his Beatles records, with the song "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" playing.
It's a really powerfully emotive experience. The pain and sadness and emotion that come through in these songs. This is one of my favorite albums of all time.(Note: I do not have the version with the added bonus tracks. I will keep my copy of POB WITHOUT the added tracks, thank you). That's just another reason why I love John so much, though, because he WAS that real. his voice and the pure emotion of it haunts me and brings me to tears.
Needless to say, I have always been a big fan of The Beatles. it was almost unbearable to me to hear. This is not an album to be taken lightly. In 2000, when I was 18 and just graduated high school, I decided to branch out and explore some of John Lennon's individual music, as I didn't have any of his solo albums. A major favorite of mine on this album is "Love." The song is just so incredibly BEAUTIFUL. The song "Mother" and "My Mummy's Dead" are also especially hard to listen to.
Plastic Ono Band was the first album of his I bought, and when I brought it home and listened, I was completely struck and devastated with emotion at what I heard. Listening to "God," and the line about him not believing in Beatles, was devastating to hear, even 30 years after they'd broken up.
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