John Lennon could typically be vicious when it came time to talk about his old songs. While he was never one to bat songs down for the hell of it, Lennon could be extremely blunt regarding what he liked and what he didn’t, especially when it came at the expense of his fellow bandmates. For a man who thought rock and roll had peaked long before The Beatles even broke up, he couldn’t get enough of what Little River Band was doing on the song ‘Reminiscing’.
If you look at where the band came from, though, they don’t exactly strike you as the kind of band that is distinctly Beatles-y in any way. They may still have the amazing harmonies enjoyed by all the other famous acts of the 1970s, but their music has always been rooted in styles that were a lot more soulful than traditional rock and roll.
Given their pedigree, this seems like something George Harrison would have liked a lot more. ‘The Quiet Beatle’ had already been turning into a solo superstar, and his other spiritual songs on albums like Extra Texture show that he at least had a passing fancy with doing the odd soulful tune now and again.
1978 was a strange time for Lennon as he came down from his “lost weekend”. He had spent the mid-1970s living up to his reputation as a rock and roll troubadour, so maybe making a record where he turned things down a notch was exactly what he needed. Since he had already begun writing with Harry Nilsson, this actually fits surprisingly well into that format.
According to guitarist Graeham Goble, he heard that it was a favourite of Lennon’s when he first heard it, telling Guitar Player, “[May Pang] wrote in her book, Loving John, that they would lay in bed listening to ‘Reminiscing,’ and he was asking her to play it again and again and again. That was pretty amazing”.
Lennon also seemed to be getting in touch with the one genre that had sent shivers down many people’s spines: disco. With a combination of Little River Band and loving songs like ‘Rock Your Baby’, one would expect that Lennon would put on his boogie shoes for the next album and turn in his answer to Saturday Night Fever.
More level heads prevailed, though, and when Lennon finally did emerge with Double Fantasy, it was a lot closer to the Lennon we all knew, still as witty as ever with a bit more lighthearted fun about being a househusband and looking after the family for the first time in his life. That didn’t mean that he left behind his soul chops for good.
Outside of going back to the likes of Roy Orbison, Lennon admitted that he took inspiration from people like Smokey Robinson as well, who no doubt had a huge impact on how Little River Band constructed their own tunes. Lennon always claimed to be a child of his influences, and if that influence happened to come from a couple of young Aussies making a soulful attempt at rock and roll, that was good enough for him.
