40 Year Itch: John Lennon Does Jerry Lewis

On September 4, 1972 John and Yoko performed "Imagine" and a reggae-ish version of "Give Peace A Chance" on the Jerry Lewis telethon. One YouTube commentator claims Jerry Lewis joined the band during the latter and played his trumpet so loudly and so badly John and Yoko left before the song was over.

 

 After the performances, when it became clear John and Yoko weren't going to return despite chants from the crowd and Jerry playing his trumpet again, Jerry got serious for a moment:

 I would suspect that John Lennon is probably one of the wisest showmen I've ever met. He knows what he's doing. He did two things tonight. He came here to help -one- I think this was the primary purpose of his visit. And two, he meant to say something. I think he did both those things. He has split. Let's thank him very much




The next day The London Art Spectrum showcased five avant garde films by John and Yoko: Cold Turkey, The Ballad of John and Yoko, Give Peace A Chance, Instant Karma and Up Your Legs Forever, a portion of which can be seen below

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40 Year Itch : Que Pasa New York?

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While most of John and Yoko's Some Time In New York, released June 13 1972, sounds like a mess made with the best of revolutionary intentions, the title track is more than a worthwhile listen. It's kind of an update to "The Ballad of John and Yoko".




  Standing on the corner
Just me and Yoko Ono
We was waiting for Jerry to land 




( Jerry is most likely Jerry Rubin who, along with Abbie Hoffman, were the first people to get in touch with Lennon when he arrived in NYC. They got him involved in a John Sinclair benefit which led to the song "John Sinclair" and other political tunes Lennon would later dismiss as "journalism and not poetry")

 Up come a man 
with the guitar in his hand 
Singing "have a marijuana if you can"
His name was David Peel 

 

 ( David Peel, who had recorded the 1969 album Have a Marijuana for Elektra was a street musician who befriended Lennon. He'd recorded a song called "The Pope Smokes Dope" and a few songs about cops hassling street musicians. After Lennon's death, Peel wrote a song about the friendship called "In My Life")

And we found that he was real
 He sangs "The pope smokes dope everyday" 
Up come a police man 
shoved us up the street Singin, 
"power to the people today!" 
NYC...NYC...NYC Que pasa Ny?
...Que pasa NY? 
Well we went to Max's Kansas City 



( New York City nightclub, a hand out for Andy Warhol, The Velvet Underground ( who recorded a live album there) and various other NYC artists) 

Got down the nitty gritty 
With the Elephants Memory Band





 (NYC band that once included Carly Simon as a vocalist. They had two songs on the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack. As the Plastic Ono Elephants Memory Band, they back John and Yoko on Some Time In New York)

 Laid something down
 As the news spread around 
About the Plastic Ono Elephants Memory Band! 
Well we played some funky boogie 



  ( I don't know how funky it is but there's boogie on Some Time like "We're All Water")

 And laid some tutti frutti 
Singing "Long tall sally's a man" 



 (Both Little Richard tunes)

Up come a preacher man
trying to be a teacher 
Singing "God's a red herring in drag!"


(Likely a lunatic street preacher. Though red herrings are often considered elements of detective novels, they originate in a bible story.)


 NYC...NYC...NYC 
Que pasa NY?...Que pasa NY?


 Well we did the Staten Island Ferry
Making movies for the telly




 Played the Fillmore




with Frank Zappa and The Mothers June of 1971.  Both Lennon and Zappa put out performance on record which cause some serious bad feelings.

 and Apollo for freedom,


Lennon's December 1971  appearance at the Apollo was to raise money for families of victims of the Attica State Prison Riots.



Tried to shake our image
 Just a cycling through the village
 But found that we had left it back in London.
 Well nobody came to bug us,
hustle us or shove us
so we decided to make it our home






(Easier sang than done. After John and Yoko posted billboards that declared "War Is Over If You Want It" the Nixon Administration spent 1972 embarking on what would be a four-year attempt to deport him. Lennon was denied permanent residency in the US until 1976 and said of the battle:

 In '72, it was really gettin' to me. Not only was I physically having to appear in court cases, it just seemed like a toothache that wouldn't go away....' Now, the last thing on earth I want to do is perform. That's a direct result of the immigration thing. In '71, '72, I wanted to go out and rock my balls off onstage and I just stopped.

 -John Lennon in a 1975 Rolling Stone interview



 If the man wants to shove us out
 We gonna jump and shout
The Statue of Liberty said, "come!"


 NYC...NYC...NYC
 Que pasa Ny?...Que pasa NY?
 NYC
down in the village What a bad-ass city!
 Que pasa Ny?...Que pasa NY?

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40 Year Itch: Lennon's Feminist Anthem

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A lot of men wanted to support women's rights. This single, released on April 24, 1972, probably wasn't the way to do it. The title is based on something Yoko said in 1969. Naturally the BBC banned the song. A lot of radio stations refused to play it and it became the lowest charting single of Lennon's career.




The song may have been offensive to some people but it all fit into Lennon's view of revolution. Here's what he told Red Mole Magazine in 1971:

  The women are very important too, we can't have a revolution that doesn't involve and liberate women. It's so subtle the way you're taught male superiority. It took me quite a long time to realise that my maleness was cutting off certain areas for Yoko. She's a red hot liberationist and was quick to show me where I was going wrong, even though it seemed to me that I was just acting naturally. That's why I'm always interested to know how people who claim to be radical treat women.


 Lennon was proud of the song. He claimed in a Playboy interview it was the first feminist anthem before Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman". Actually Reddy released "I Am Woman" in August 1971. It just failed to so much of anything until September of 1972. By the holiday season "I Am Woman" was #1.

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40 Years Ago This Week: John and Yoko Co-Host Mike Douglas Show

"They're not just Super Stars. They're Super People".

And with that Mike Douglas -- still basking in the glow from a tepid performance of The Beatles's "Michelle"-(see below) -introduced his co-hosts for the week of February 14-18, 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

For John and Yoko, it was a week to indoctrinate people with some hope for peace ( if you want it), equality and natural balance. Among the guests that week: activist Ralph Nader, comedian Louis Nye, Chuck Berry and The Chambers Brothers.

Lennon and Yoko were joined by the Elephants Memory Band  for a performance of “It’s So Hard” from Imagine.Later that week Yoko took it upon herself to howl through Chuck Berry's "Memphis". When it came time for Berry and Lennon to play "Johnny B Goode" you can see Yoko pick up the mic again only to discover that it had been shut off.



Later that year Elephant's Memory, John and Yoko released the god awful Some Time In New York City. and Lennon performed at Madison Square Garden. There is also this:

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Bowie Bio Starman Chapters 11-14 Jean Genie to Fame

In Chapter 10, Bowie tours America with the Spiders. And mountains of cocaine. They record "The Jean Genie"--a song about Iggy Pop --borrowing a famous riff from Muddy Waters ("I'm a Man"). Angie and Bowie are butting heads constantly.


In Chapter 11, Bowie records his cover album ( Pin -Ups) before Bryan Ferry finishes his cover album (These Foolish Things) and tapes a special for NBC that never airs...as his costume, seen above, is declared too provocative.
In Chapter 12 Bowie tries to "out Rolling Stone" the Rolling Stones with the album Diamond Dogs. He gets close with "Rebel Rebel" (note the drums echoing "Satisfaction")



After seeing the Main Ingredient in Chapter 12, Bowie tries to record a soul album. He name drops as many American images as possible in "Young Americans" including Nixon's resignation announced three days before the song was recorded.



Bowie and Lennon have a blast in a NYC studio, borrowing riffs from The Rascals "Foot Stompin" (really?) and Shirley and Company's current hit "Shame Shame Shame" which Bowie mishears during the jam as "Fame Fame Fame". The last minute addition to Young Americans is Bowie's first #1 hit in the US. He celebrates by performing on Soul Train.

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40 Years Ago: John and Yoko perform with Zappa June 6, 1971

On June 6, 1971 John and Yoko joined Zappa and The Mothers on The Fillmore East stage for a guest appearance at the end of the concert.
First they performed an Olympics cover called "Well". (The Young Rascals took The LA band's 1965 tune "Good Lovin' to Number one; NRBQ recorded their "Same Old Thing" for Yankee Stadium ).
The rest of the songs were jams, including one called "Scumbag".
Yoko, as usual, is very present.

Zappa gave Lennon tapes of the show. John and Yoko included the concert as a bonus on their 1972 double album Some Time In New York City. For a variety of reason, this did not sit well with Zappa.
The way Phil Spector mixed the tapes was dishonest. (Flo & Eddie vocals both left out of the mix; cheers and applause edited in)
But what truly pissed Zappa off is that John and Yoko took full songwriting credit for "Jamrag", which included elements of Zappa's "King Kong" from the Uncle Meat album.
Years later, Zappa would still be grinding his teeth about that move:

Today Some Time is an interesting time capsule. John and Yoko at their most political. Not always at their most musical.
Upon its release Milwaukee Sentinel music writer Stuart Wilk wrote "John, Yoko and The Plastic Ono Band have produced another shrill, superficial look at trendy leftist politics and have plunged even further into their endless echo chamber."

By the way: How many Turtles were on the stage that night?
The answer is three:
Flo (Mark Volman), Eddie (Howard Kaylan) and bass player Jim Pons.

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6 Songs with Alan White #3, "Imagine" 1971

"Imagine" has long been considered the greatest peace anthem in rock history, but how many fans realize John Lennon is "imagining" a utopia full of atheists and anarchists? Lennon has called "Imagine" "Working Class Hero" with sugar on it for conservatives. Future Yes drummer Alan White, now a dedicated member of the Plastic Ono Band, can be seen in the above clip hearing Lennon play "Imagine" for the first time. He tells 1001Songs the story behind Imagine


Actually John just sat down and played it on the piano and sang it for everybody. And everybody was just, you know, amazed. Just such a fantastic song with so much meaning--words that still mean so much today.

"Imagine" has one of the simplest kinds of drum rhythms and it's a very simple song but I learned a kind of lesson from that.
It's not really what you play but how you play it and the feeling behind it. Sometimes that makes it what it is and that's what "Imagine" was all about because we only did three takes and then we did backing tracks. And after the third take we all looked at each other and said I guess that was it. everybody in the room knew that was the take for the song.
1001Songs: What was the feeling in the room?
Oh it was one of quietness and looking around and John said "Wonderful."

Alan played drums on six of the Imagine album tracks, among them "Oh Yoko" and "How do You Sleep?", a scathing reply to Paul's "Too Many People" and other perceived sleights, featuring George Harrison on slide guitar.



John gave us all a sheet with the words to "Imagine" and all the songs to the album Imagine and he said "If there's any song you don't feel like you want to play on because of what it's saying, let me know and they were all fantastic so I just played on a bunch of stuff on the album and loved every moment of it.

I didn't realize at the time that I was kind of a part of history. I was just in the studio making another album kind of thing.


This would be Alan's last session with Lennon but he recalls all his Plastic Ono Band recordings with fondness.

Whenever I started doing anything with the band, he used to say "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it!"
He was just really nice to me, always like a person who took me under his wing and he'd say "This is my little drummer."


Tomorrow: George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord"

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6 Songs with Alan White #2 "Instant Karma!" 1970

John Lennon enlisted George Harrison, Billy Preston, Klaus Voorman and future Yes drummer Alan White on "Instant Karma!". Lennon claims he "wrote it for breakfast, recorded it for lunch, and we're putting it out for dinner."

1001Songs asked Alan about those memorable "fall down the stairs" drum fills. Alan explained he was playing a lot of prog rock at the time and experimenting with time signatures.


I was going through a phase in my life when I thought "Wouldn't it be interesting if a drummer is playing a certain groove and when you get to a drum fill you take it out of that meter into another meter and then come back into the song again?"
So that was what that was all about. And when I first tried it in the studio John said "What was that?" and I said "I had this idea to take it out--"
He said "It was fantastic!" He said "Whatever you're doing, just keep doing it!"

TOMORROW: IMAGINE

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6 Songs with Alan White: #1 "Cold Turkey" live in Toronto 1969

Best known as the drummer of Yes for more than 30 years, Alan White has also played on some of the greatest recordings in rock history. 1001Songs asked Alan to talk about six of those recordings, beginning with the concert that helped John Lennon decide he didn't need The Beatles anymore.

Alan was only twenty years old when he heard John and Yoko had seen one of his London gigs with his band, Blue Chips.

I got a call the next day saying "I saw you playing last night."
He said "You're really good".
He said "I got a gig for you.Do you want to come and jump into it 'cuz we wont have any time for rehearsals?"
I thought it was a friend of mine just making a joke on me so I put the phone down. I got a call about ten minutes later. He said "No! It's really me." And at that time I almost fell off my chair.


The next day Alan walked into a room and met John and Yoko and bass player Klaus Voorman ( from Manfred Mann. He also designed The Beatles Revolver album)

John said "I forgot to tell you. Eric Clapton's playing guitar and I went (surprised facial expression) "Oh really?"

That day they boarded the plane from London to Toronto.

We went to the back of the plane. There was nobody on the plane
at the back. So two acoustic guitars ( Eric and John). He gave me a set of drumsticks and I played on the back of the seat in front of me and that was the rehearsal for the show.

They landed and got to the Toronto gig with just 45 minutes to spare.

I didn't get any nerves at all about any of that. And I was flung right into this, and it's called "Rising to the Occasion". You just deal with it.
The only thing that perturbed me a little bit is when we got there, Little Richard was on stage, which was incredible, and Gene Vincent was walking around backstage.

The stage crew helped build a drum set for Alan.

John went 1-2-3-4 and that was it.

The set contained a number of rock standards John and Eric knew. "Blue Suede Shoes", "Money" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy". Then Yoko began singing.



That's the other thing I found very strange because we were in the middle of a number and she got in a bag and laid on the floor at John's feet and was screaming into the microphone. I kept thinking it the feedback coming back from the speakers.

Alan is second from the left, between Klaus and Yoko.

Alan on far left, EC, Klaus and John & Yoko



TOMORROW: "Instant Karma"

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