Outside of his work as an artist, John Lennon was an even better critic. From tearing other bands through the mud to being particularly harsh on his original compositions, Lennon was known to ridicule any work he described as subpar. Even though Lennon could dish out trash talk with the best of them, he maintained that one album was the true high point of his artistic career.
Despite going solo, though, the dissolution of The Beatles was still fresh in Lennon’s mind at the end of the 1960s. Having come to the end of the line with musicians who had become part of his extended family, his collaboration with Yoko Ono left him feeling like she was one of the only people who could relate to him.
After staging various protests for peace, Lennon started to get himself back into shape when he heard of various books from primal scream therapist Arthur Janov. While the plan was for Lennon to review the book, he ended up going in for treatment not long after reading it, needing to treat some of his raw nerves left over from his childhood.
Quickly getting to the bottom of his pain, Lennon would channel most of his lessons into songs, creating tracks that were emotionally raw from the first time you heard them. Played with a trio configuration with Ringo Starr and Klaus Voorman on drums and bass, Lennon created a bold artistic statement with Plastic Ono Band, with each song becoming a massive exodus of emotion from his frail psyche.
Throughout the album, Lennon doesn’t hold back about how he feels, talking about the abandonment issues he had at the hands of his parents on ‘Mother’ or bringing big business to task for the division of the class system on ‘Working Class Hero’. While most fans were shellshocked throughout the project, nothing hit as hard as the song ‘God’, where Lennon professes that the dream of the 1960s was officially dead.
When talking about the album, Lennon would say that his first solo effort surpassed anything that The Beatles had done, saying, “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I think it’s realistic and it’s true to the me that has been developing over the years of my life. I like first-person music. But because of my hang-ups and many other things, I would only now and then specifically write about me. Now I wrote all about me, and that’s why I like it. It’s me! And nobody else”.
The personal exploration that Lennon brought across on his debut would only be explored further on the next album, Imagine. With Phil Spector producing, Lennon created a fantastic follow-up album that was more open and honest about his feelings on the world, from the biting ‘Gimme Some Truth’ to his spite towards Paul McCartney on ‘How Do You Sleep’.
While each Beatle may have found their way back into the limelight after their dissolution, Plastic Ono Band wasn’t looking to make a statement about how people should live thier lives anymore. For an artist who was on top of the world for so long, it took this album for Lennon to prove that he was still human underneath all those Beatle credentials.
