When Johnny Comes Marching Home: Rock ‘n’ Roll at 50

Lennon’s covers album looked like one more solo folly, but it was a turning point

February 20, 2025February 20, 2025 Ryan Maffei 1 Comment 50th anniversary, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Rock 'n' Roll, Stand By Me, Yoko Ono

Rock ‘n’ Roll promo poster (Image: eBay)

Born in 1940, John Lennon was the archetypal war baby; his middle name was Winston, for God’s sake, though after he fell in love for good he was apt to crowd it out with “Ono.”

More than a lot of his old-guard-fatigued peers, he carried a shrapnel-shard of endless war inside his head like a pearl. However hard he wanted to lead the world into giving peace a chance, when John felt his passion hardest, it resembled rage, however righteous. Listen to his soul covers on his group’s first LPs — he transforms the impatience of “Please Mr. Postman”, the frustration of “Money”, the devotion of “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me”, the resignation of “Anna”, and the pure joy of “Twist and Shout” into something aflame and a little frightening.

When he blew up the thing he rose to fame (and power) on, he’d seemed the best-equipped to capitalize, or something lefter-wing than that. Sure, nobody asked for the “experimental” LPs he prematurely kicked off a solo career with, the most listenable of which deterred the curious by coming clad in naked photos of himself and the spark at his inborn avant-garde tinder, one Yoko Ono. But with his intellect-signaling spectacles, all-white wardrobe, face-swallowing beard, and barely-shaken status as leader of the Finest Band, his exhortations to pacifistic revolution carried a credence they might not have from another fortunate son.

But even fans of the original (and best) “Revolution” noted that John seemed unready to put his money, or anything else, where his mouth was. Just one cause stirred the courage of his contagious convictions in the man himself: the man himself. In a long, wintry year of myth-dismantling solo albums — Paul phoning it in, Ringo trying on hats, George burning down all boundaries — the final entry, and first Lennon LP EMI deemed unalienating enough to merit a non-vanity catalog number, featured our hero decrying God Herself, and shrieking out his unvarnished pain in a manner that made “Money” feel “Summertime Blues”-level petulant. It was a private revolution, and while it was brave, it was too personal to start a movement.

Lennon was thrilling when he lost his cool (“Help!”, “Yer Blues”, the now-unlistenable “Run for Your Life”), but not necessarily shrewd. Hence the bridge-burning “Lennon Remembers” interview, which yielded a fondly recalled National Lampoon parody, “Magical Misery Tour” (“GENIUS IS PAAAAIIIINNNN” — and it is, you know). But he still had pop instincts worthy of his glasses ca. ‘71, and he noted that a coarse, forthright social commentary like “Working Class Hero” could use a spoonful of the sugar his old estranged fiancé Paul reliably coated his own nonsense in. “Jealous Guy” and “Gimme Some Truth” are no less personal/political than “Mother” or “Give Peace a Chance”, yet they boast the same preternatural songwriting instincts of the man who co-wrote “I Want to Hold Your Hand” for the final time on record.

Who knows what happened in 1972 — show me the U.S. electoral map that year and I’ll show you a conspiratorial mystery they’ll never declassify. Lennon, the Fabs’ sole permanent U.S. resident at the time, wasn’t just shouldering an uneven fourth of the band’s unprecedented fame, which even Ringo was drinking his days away over. John’s mouth almighty, his not-so-secret weapon and own worst enemy, had pulled the paranoid eyes of the first US President (well, maybe) to draft an enemies list toward his every unsubtle move. It didn’t help that his only release that year was the charmless Some Time in New York City — one disc of agitprop featuring Yoko’s crude first stabs at pop, and a jammin’-with-Frank disc which made “Apple Jam” taste like caviar. Its only good song was centered around a flagrant use of the n-word.

All that money never ended up buying John effective therapy (still in development then) or, God knows, medication. But of course, it was his wild will that brought his old band to their massive success in the first place, and drew them into shattering iconoclast corners like “I Am the Walrus” when their drug use had ripened into kandy-kolored whimsy. By ‘68, “Glass Onion,” “Revolution,” “Yer Blues,” and “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” are why “Lady Madonna” didn’t have to beat “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” And just try to imagine Abbey Road sans “Come Together” or “I Want You” without getting a toothache. But as his band folded, his poorly-policed personal life could yield bizarre missteps (“Cold Turkey”, “Power to the People”), and his winning wit had given way to drug-warped sincerity.

John Lennon Rock ‘n’ Roll, Capitol Records 1975

Thus, John wasn’t prepared to deal with the landslide loss of the anti-Nixon candidate he’d worked so… well, inconsistently and lazily, but intently, to help win. His method of coping was one entitlement two-step too far: he fucked another woman at the election party, Yoko close enough to hear every torturous sound outside the door. She herself had been working hard (if, again, not for McGovern) since Some Time in New York City, preparing a double-LP of songs that while often awkward and secondhand were sometimes not just as good but as groundbreaking as John’s recent best. We know from Paul that John wasn’t just a jealous guy about romance; all he’d written in that time was “Nutopian International Anthem,” and not even the title. A former pharaoh realizing his fallibility and it terrifying him into eccentricity, Lennon was about to be served his slice of piss-off cake — he couldn’t even eat it, too.

Not every manic-depressive romantic exile gets a live-in replacement companion specially selected by your bullshit’s victim — the ever-intriguing May Pang, who it often seems might have been a better match for him if he’d only gotten over himself, and who suffered abuse not just from John but Yoko. Nor to spend untold amounts of money on brandy alexanders with Harry Nilsson, not to mention studio time (occasionally with Paul Fucking McCartney on hand) you’re apt to waste on cocaine you didn’t get for free either. At his vocal weakest – like Dylan and Bowie, who also had a tough time with fame, John destroyed his voice in the ‘70s — the Fabs’ best vocalist sounded like a cartoon (Bugs Bunny, say) after a crying binge.

The pain throughout Mind Games and Walls and Bridges, the work of a great artist not even conceding but stumbling backward into contemporary studio trends (cf. Goats Head Soup and It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, which also can’t decide if they’re slick or a mess), definitely isn’t the genius kind. The melodies are his most rote (“Whatever Gets You Thru the Night,” “Bring on the Lucie”) when they don’t steal from his better work outright (“Steel and Glass”). Each has one brilliant hit (“Mind Games” and “#9 Dream”) and several simulations of something more (“Nobody Loves You When You’re Down and Out,” “Out the Blue”). Strong deep cuts (“One Day at a Time,” “What You Got”) are scarce and easy to miss. No one pretended Mind Games was Imagine, and the best thing about Walls and Bridges was its promo tour, where a little Marxist (as in Groucho) wit and Hard Day’s Night vitality crept back into the old boy.

John just couldn’t function without his Madonna, and his heart already had that permanent hole in it — he was never destined to release a career-summary comp called Finally Enough Love. His empty cage now corroded (with liquor), it’s conceivable the solo John was already eyeing the exit on his lonely pop life three years in. That’s when he decided to rejuvenate his flagging spirit with a record of covers of old singles he treasured, a popular move in ’73. And because obvious clinical insanity never deterred fiercely independent yet also parasitically codependent John, he hired the fella who’d improved Imagine as reliably as he’d destroyed Ronnie Spector. Maybe that he’d gotten Phil to strip down for his first album gave him hope.

John Lennon Rock ‘n’ Roll and Walls and Bridges ad (Image: Reddit)

You’ve really gotta love how every story of Phil Spector producing a record from this time on involves him firing a gun, and how there’s never any context for why — though there probably wasn’t any context for why. This yielded a top-shelf Lennon quip (“Phil, if you’re gonna kill me, kill me, but don’t fuck with my ears, I need ‘em!”) but little in the way of bullseye music. And anyway, John’s heart wasn’t exactly in it either. The “rock oldies” idea was a canny and poignant, if slightly regressive, move at that stage of his career. Yet Lennon came up with it under duress — Chuck Berry didn’t give a shit, but his publisher Morris Levy took umbrage with Lennon’s interpolation of lyrics from Berry’s (superior but totally distinct) “You Can’t Catch Me” for “Come Together.” Suing a zillionaire: a temptation it takes mettle to dodge.

Here’s something you don’t hear when you play the best old rock ‘n’ roll records, a number of which were a part of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s revival — a shitload of unnecessary instruments. The most vulgar of these on Lennon’s LP is a mass of unavoidable horns whittled into a plastic dagger, like “Savoy Truffle” with less integrity. Lennon’s early solo music, which includes his fabulous if eccentric production on Nilsson’s Pussy Cats, is so special in part because it’s so distinct: Jim Keltner (or Ringo) and Klaus Voormann beefed up into a pummeling bottom, horny-for-Elvis slapback on the vocal, guitars which never stop snarling. But there’s a dose of decadent glitz on the Rock ‘n’ Roll cuts which admire rock through a Rocky Horror Show lens, a campy cosplay which filters out everything rough and spontaneous about the style.

What Lennon really needed to do was hire a true rock ‘n’ roll combo — surely, Scotty Moore and Bill Black would’ve shown up in a flash — and, in a display of unprecedented discipline, shaped up his voice to the point where he could’ve put aside those insecurities that always sent him rushing toward obscuring effects. There is simply no way this would’ve happened in 1973. Thus, every track on Rock ‘n’ Roll is like a game of What’s Wrong With This Picture. First thing you spot on his opening take on Gene Vincent’s famously feral “Be Bop a Lula” is a left-hand piano that couldn’t be less loose; second is a reverb you know he demanded be louder than his actual vocal input; third is the tragedy of hearing John throw away a classic his voice was designed for. File with “Rock ‘n’ Roll Music” under “unaccountable missteps”.

And then for three glorious minutes, you wonder if maybe this’ll be a great record after all. Because Lennon’s take on Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” is not only better than the original, but one of the best recordings he ever made. The original, while a beautiful song held up by a powerful, casually soulful vocalist, was always a little too lilting and gossamer in its first Lieber-Stoller guise — typical for a Drifter, but inapposite for someone who’s insisting they’ll stand their ground. But for once on a busy record, Spector’s layers upon layers evoke high stakes, and Lennon sings like he’s fraying the end of his rope. Catching John when he really meant it in the ‘70s was trickier than bottling lightning. But this glorious recording did both.

Then a tumble of well-intentioned mistakes — the most tight-a$’ed “Rip it Up” you’ve ever heard, which lassoes in “Ready Teddy” just so he can do two great songs dirty. A not-even-a-little-fleet-of-foot “You Can’t Catch Me,” where his voice struggles against, I dunno, the water slowly pouring into his sinking airmobile. A swingless “Ain’t That a Shame” he grinds to bits. Batshit classic “Do You Wanna Dance” redone as the ugliest drunken Copacabana ballad. A “Sweet Little Sixteen” they should place on a neighborhood watch list. A “Slippin’ and a Slidin’” that can’t get a few feet up the hill. A “Peggy Sue” whose rippling toms leave bruises. The least seductive Sam Cooke cover ever mutating into a Little Richard tune even he’d consider too much (“whooooo! Ooh! mah soul, John. REEL it back! AAAAAAAOWW!”)

Back cover of Rock ‘n’ Roll (Image: Discogs)

John is trying his ass off on most of these songs — he hadn’t sung this hard in ages. But his great trick used to be sounding desperate and flippant at the same time. Here he sounds strained, depressed, drugged-up, cracked-up, tin-eared, indifferent, indulgent, unmoored, unhinged and, under miles and miles of bravado (and overdubs), totally unsure of himself.

The degree to which he oversings most of these songs is so brutal it should’ve gotten him sued further. You wanna scrape off half of every arrangement not so you can hear him, but so you can look him in the eyes and tell him to relax. Which he does once more, on a madly delectable cover of “Bony Moronie,” before he fleshes out the Lee Dorsey hit he’d dabbled in on Walls & Bridges (embarrassing the ever-neglected 11-year-old Julian, who didn’t know the piano-drums jam was being recorded) and then drowns himself in a Lloyd Price ballad.

The engineers apparently caught degrees of decadence and depression the public wouldn’t hear of until he got caught with a Kotex on his head. “John would drink a bottle of brandy or vodka a day,” May Pang told Peter Doggett. “I was so naïve at that time that I did not realize that [he] was also on heroin.” Doggett reports that an outtake of the closing “Just Because” saw John starting to comment lasciviously on the assembled backing vocalists (“I want to suck your nipples, baby”), before emitting this deathless line: “I need some relief from my obligations. A little cocaine will set me on my feet.” John was trapped in a nightmare even “I Am the Walrus” couldn’t match. Then the increasingly erratic Spector got in a car crash — in which he, among other serious injuries, lost his hair. The sessions went on indefinite hold.

I’d love to manufacture dramatic prose out of the subsequent turns in Lennon’s legal battle with Morris Levy. But I’ll leave that to all the lawyers and accountants who cherish his band enough to have pored over the forest-flooring documents Fab Four suits had piled up since Apple started to rot. The most absurd turn in the saga was that Levy called John up in 1974, demanding to know what became of his score-settling covers project, and Lennon tried to assuage Levy by sending him master tapes — which Levy then issued on his Adam VIII label as a cheapo mail-order LP called Roots: John Lennon Sings the Great Rock & Roll Hits. In a retread of the Alpha Omega-“red/blue” album kerfuffle, injunctions were filed, and Capitol rush-released Rock ‘n’ Roll in February ‘75, to keep fans from giving Levy any more dough.

VIDEO: John Lennon “Stand By Me”

Many noted that the cover art, featuring John as an unflappably cool-looking young teddy boy (or, let’s be real here, punk) in the doorway of 22 Wohlwillstraße in Hamburg, was the best thing about the record — and outside of “Stand By Me” and “Bony Maronie,” it was. But like his earlier, experimental albums, the concept was more valuable than the content. In going back to his roots, Lennon had discovered how many dead ends lay where he’d once found relief and release. The man who’d done more to rejuvenate rock ‘n’ roll in 1963 was tired in a way that cried for a change of direction. And either backstage at Lennon’s rare but spirited appearance at Elton John’s Madison Square Garden Thanksgiving concert, or some other place around that time, John was paid a visit by his all-time favorite guru, Yoko having been spurred to reach out to John by a concerned Paul. A love story resumed being written.

At what cost, though? “The separation didn’t work out,” went another classic Lennon quip, but neither did a reunion he and three other old pals were acting more amenable toward in late ’74, which incidentally was when the quartet legally dissolved their partnership. John made public overtures to new musical efforts when his taxing citizenship battle was finally resolved in early 1975, but he mostly spent time repairing and reexploring bonds with Yoko. After Sean Lennon’s scarily difficult October 9 birth (a date he shared with his dad), Lennon decided not to play those record industry mind games his ex-bandmates would spend the second half of the ‘70s losing. When he came back after years of casual demos and many, many loaves of bread, he felt like a new man, one who’d ascended more than a few rungs up the spiritual ladder.

But the wildfire icon of the early ‘60s had flamed out long before.

Author
Recent Posts

Ryan Maffei

Ryan Maffei is a freelance writer, musician and actor in the Dallas area. He was a member of the lost punk group Hot Lil Hands and the lost pop group the Pozniaks. He loves the Go-Betweens and was lucky enough to write liner notes for their box sets.