The History and Popular Music of the ’70s class learned about John Lennon’s harrowing first solo record from 1970. Here are some of their reactions.
Plastic Ono Band encompasses a variety of different sounds–from soft singing to sheer screaming. As eclectic as the tracklist feels, the album as a whole seems to convey one particular emotion: pain. With the breakup of the Beatles, Lennon used this album to reclaim himself and reflect on his various different troubles. In the song “God,” he expresses how he wants to detach himself from the Beatles: “I was the Walrus/ But now I’m John.” He essentially wants to move forward, and for people to recognize him as John Lennon as opposed to a member of the Beatles. To give the listener an idea of who he is, he examines his personal issues through a number of contrasting tones.
Lennon uses emotions like anger and sadness to express his personal struggles with family, religion and fame. For example, in the song “Mother,” he starts out singing about his parents with a particularly dejected voice. Each verse starts out with him crying out “Mother,” “Father,” or “Children”” with pure agony. However, in the end, as he repeats the line, “Mother don’t go/ Daddy come home,” his voice becomes more intense–eventually to the point where he just screams it, tying into the primal scream therapy that he used to cope with his pain. This shift in tone highlights the wide range of emotions that he feels as a result of his childhood trauma.
Lennon utilizes blunt lyrics to get to his point as straightforwardly as possible, straying away from any figurative language. His lines are painfully frank and leave no room for misinterpretation. For example, in the song “Love,” each verse uses a very select number of words that are flipped around. The line “love is wanting to be loved” uses a circular definition that does not clearly define love. This lack of a real definition serves to convey that the feeling of love can not really be put into words. Instead of trying to concoct a more intricate definition, Lennon merely aims to express what love is to him. Although many of his lyrics throughout the album lack any complex metaphors or wordplay, they effectively communicate his personal ideas of love, family, and more. To put additional emphasis on these ideas, Lennon utilizes a minimal production style to direct the listener’s attention towards the lyrics.
The sparse production and instrumentation create a bare sound that contributes to the raw emotions he feels. For example, the song “Working Class Hero” features only vocals and a repeating guitar chord progression. This sound forces the listener to really focus on the lyrics and tone, allowing them to notice his sarcastic delivery and witty lyrics about the struggles of class in a corrupt and ruthless system. Overall, Lennon’s honest and elementary approach to his sound and lyrics makes this album a deeply personal exploration of his struggles and effectively separates him from the rest of the Beatles. – Sebastian Moreno-Comstock
This album was a way for Lennon to take off his mask. I chose the background color scheme because it reminds me of the willow tree on the album cover. The mask represents false happiness, which is why I chose yellow. – Grant Reiner
The Five Best Lyrics from Plastic Ono Band
“God”
“God is a concept by which we measure our pain/ I’ll say it again/ God is a concept by which we measure our pain, yeah/ Pain, yeah.”
This line is one of the most powerful and succinct on the album. Lennon thinks it’s so important that he actually repeats it to add emphasis. One way to interpret it is that those who feel the most pain believe in God the most and vice versa. Those who have had a hard life, both those living in poverty and those who have suffered trauma, feel better about themselves if they have a God looking out for them and an afterlife to look forward to. The very phrase “God is a concept” could be considered blasphemous because it delegitimizes God. This song was very controversial at the time but I think it makes a powerful lyrical statement. Additionally, you could substitute anything that people zealously believe in for God; Hitler, Yoga, Kennedy etc.
“Mother”
“Children, don’t do what I have done/ I couldn’t walk and I tried to run.”
Throughout this album Lennon struggles with the hypocrisy of criticizing his parents while at the same time inflicting the same pain onto his own son. In moments like these, he is self-aware and apologetic about the fact that he did wrong. I think the second line is a metaphor for how he rushed into adulthood and the responsibility of parenthood without first learning how to walk, or be a child.
“Working Class Hero”
“There’s room at the top they are telling you still/ But first you must learn how to smile as you kill/ If you want to be like the folks on the hill.”
This is one of my favorite lyrics from this song, and is a very concise critique of capitalism. Lennon describes how people are deceived into believing they can reach the top if they step on everyone around them. Many people in modern society believe they will one day be rich, so they refuse to try to make society more equal. The line: “the folks on the hill” reminds me of Katrina, and how the affluent people who could afford to live on higher ground managed to escape, while the working class people below were left to bear the brunt of the disaster.
“Mother”
“Mother, you had me but I never had you/ I wanted you, you didn’t want me/ So I, I just got to tell you/ Goodbye, goodbye.”
This lyric is very emotional because in one stroke he expresses the pain that he feels from his childhood, and makes peace with his mother. He also makes stark contrasts between him and his mother that stick with the listener. In the first line, Lennon uses the homonym “had” to mean both give birth, and to be emotionally available. He continues mourning about his childhood in a very blunt way, before saying a final goodbye.
“I Found Out”
“Now that I showed you what I been through/ Don’t take nobody’s word what you can do/ There ain’t no Jesus gonna come from the sky/ Now that I found out I know I can cry.”
The first two lines are Lennon essentially saying he shot for the stars, starting from the bottom, and making it to the top. Despite the trauma he suffered and the lack of support, even from his own family, he realized his dreams, and so can you. The second and third lines flip things abruptly but are still connected. He is struggling emotionally with his realization that God isn’t real, but it also feels like a call to arms, sort of like the first two lines. There’s no Jesus coming to save you, so you better accomplish everything you want to in this life. This ties into lyrics later in the song where he talks about how religion can make you complacent. – Jasper Selwood
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