38: PLASTIC ONO BAND | JOHN LENNON
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is the debut solo album by English musician John Lennon. It was released in December 1970, after Lennon had issued three experimental albums with wife Yoko Ono and Live Peace in Toronto 1969, a live performance in Toronto credited to the Plastic Ono Band. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band was met with critical acclaim, with many praising the production, lyrics, and Lennon's performance. It peaked at number eight on the UK Albums Chart and at number six on the US Billboard 200.
Co-produced by Lennon, Ono and Phil Spector, the album contains a largely raw production sound with songs heavily influenced by Lennon's then-recent primal scream therapy. Its lyrics reflect Lennon's personal issues and includes themes of child-parent abandonment and psychological suffering. The tracks were recorded in September and October 1970 at Ascot Sound Studios and Abbey Road Studios, simultaneously with Ono's debut avant-garde solo album, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band. Both albums feature the same musicians (Lennon, Klaus Voormann, and Ringo Starr) and production team and nearly identical cover artwork.
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band came to be generally regarded as one of Lennon's finest solo albums. In 1987, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it fourth in its list "The 100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years" and in 2012, ranked it number 23 in their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It was voted number 244 in Colin Larkin All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). The album was remastered in 2000 with two bonus tracks: Lennon's 1971 single "Power to the People" and "Do the Oz", which previously appeared on the 1998 box set John Lennon Anthology.
Following the Beatles' break-up in April 1970, John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono undertook primal therapy with the guidance of Arthur Janov for four weeks at his London offices, before the three flew to Los Angeles to continue the therapy for four months. Janov's therapy technique emphasised emotionally reliving repressed childhood traumas rather than analytical discussion. In July 1970, Lennon started to record demos of songs he wrote that would show up on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and on one particular day, the 26th, Lennon recorded numerous demos of his song "God", which includes the line "I don't believe in Beatles". Lennon's therapy was never completed due to the expiry of his US visa. With the experience he received from the therapy, he was able to channel his emotions into an album's worth of self-revelatory material.
Recording
Having exhausted the extensions of their American visas, Lennon and Ono returned from the US on 15 September 1970. Recording began at Abbey Road Studios between 26 September and 27 October 1970 using Lennon, Klaus Voormann, and Ringo Starr as the core musicians, with Phil Spector and Billy Preston each playing piano on a track. The group jammed to a variety of songs in between recording new tracks: "When a Boy Meets a Girl", "That's All Right Mama", "Glad All Over", "Honey Don't", "Don't Be Cruel", "Hound Dog", and "Matchbox".[4] "Plastic Ono Band" refers to the conceptual band Lennon and Ono had formed in 1969 of various supporting musicians they would use on their various solo albums. Lennon asked Spector, who had produced Lennon's hit "Instant Karma!" earlier that year, to co-produce the album. Spector played piano on "Love", but Lennon and Ono produced the album largely on their own, as Spector was unavailable during most of the recording sessions. Spector mixed the album for three days toward the end of October. Full article