My Evolution Revolution of the Solo Fabs (Or Imagine Living in the Material World, say London Town, with Beaucoups of Blues) Part 7: What Were They Thinking?

Wild Life, the critically underwhelming debut of Wings on LP, was followed up with a controversial debut single, which was promptly banned by the BBC as being “unsuitable for broadcasting.”  I’d heard about the song being banned, and was eager to finally get to hear the notorious Give Ireland Back to the Irish.  Even at the time, with little to no understanding of Bloody Sunday, it was clear that the song was political in intent, but rather banal both musically and particularly lyrically.  Written, recorded and released within a month of the tragic day, it’s clear that McCartney felt compelled to respond, and the controversy with the BBC’s banning of the song shows that McCartney had hit his mark.  I just wish it was a better tune.

 On his VH1 Storytellers album, Ringo tells an amusing story of how he came to write Back of Boogaloo, how it was primarily based on his friend’s, T-Rex’s Marc Bolin, incessant use of the word “boogaloo.”  The fact, however, that lyrically, Back Off Boogaloo seems to be a song rife with slams at Paul McCartney, suggests that Bolin was not Ringo’s only inspiration.  If, as I believe, the song includes swipes at McCartney (“Everything you try to do/You know it sure sounds wasted” and “Wake up, meathead/Don’t pretend that you are dead” for instance), it’s actually sadder than Lennon’s overt How Do You Sleep?, especially considering the flip side of Ringo’s previous single, Early 1970, was so conciliatory.  As with How Do You Sleep?, George Harrison is on hand, playing some stellar slide guitar, and also producing the song (and actually co-writing it, too, but uncredited), which is a more than tacit verification that George was in agreement with Ringo.   

Sigh.

Still, Back Off Boogaloo, driven by Ringo’s drumming, is one of my favorite Starr songs.  And the single’s picture sleeve is a hoot. 

A little over two months after releasing Give Ireland Back to the Irish, McCartney and Wings release the inexplicably dreadful Mary Had a Little Lamb.  Well, it’s not quite that bad.  As a nursery rhyme song for kiddies it’s fine, but it’s hardly worthy of an A-Side by a former Beatle.

It’s said that McCartney released the song as a response to the BBC banning Ireland, and as such, Mary Had a Little Lamb is a pretty great way for McCartney to thumb his nose at his would-be censors.  But McCartney himself says otherwise, claiming he wrote the sing for his children.  I believe McCartney.  And the song is lame.

The flip-side, however, Little Woman Love, is tight little rocker that’s over before you know it.  (Unlike Lamb, which seems eons long.) 

My local Sam Goody had an abysmal policy that made me flinch every time I was at the register.  Upon ringing up my new treasured album, one that I would handle with the utmost care at all times, the clerk would reach for the nearby blade-cutter, turn the album face down, slice a neat little cut in the shrink-wrap at the lower right-hand corner, and write—IN PEN no less!—the purchase price of the album, right there, on the album’s cover!  Done, I suppose, to somehow thwart would-be scammers trying to get one-up on Goody by returning an album, purchased when on sale, for a full price refund; but c’mon.  Are a few pennies here and there worth desecrating an album’s cover art, even if done in the most inconspicuous location on the cover?  Ack.

In the case of John and Yoko’s Some Time in New York City album, particularly with it’s newspaper design, which covers both the front and back of the jacket, the black-ink pen scribble, reading B 3.74, stands out like that proverbial sore thumb.

Since albums became CDs, and now downloads, album cover art has gone the way of the dodo.  Which means, now, looking at the back cover of Sometime in New York City, the B 3.74 doesn’t seem that bad.  Indeed, it amazes me that it only cost three dollars and seventy-four cents for the album.  Double album!  (Although I do remember the shrink wrap having a sticker saying the second album was considered a “Bonus record”.) 

So, why all this shmooze about Sam Goody and writing on the back of album covers?  Because the less said about Sometime in New York City, the better.

After Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, I had exceptionally high expectations for Sometime.  Yes, I figured that with Phil (To Know Him Is To Love Him) Spector’s image being included on the newspaper cover, above the fold no less, meant that we were likely in for some heavy duty echoooooo.  And in that, particularly on the vocals, my expectations were met to a T.  (Just check out Yoko’s intro to Sisters, O Sisters where she laughs saying “Male chauvinist-pig engineers eers eers eers…).  But even Spector’s wall-of-sound co-production couldn’t hide the fact that most of the songs on Sometime in New York City were pretty awful.

Since I was a kid when I first got the album, I had little knowledge of what Lennon was talking about in most of the songs on Sometime.  And considering how personal and open he was in both Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, and how the honesty and directness opened the songs up to a universality, Sometime came off as preachy.  (“Too Many People/Preaching practices”).  It wasn’t for years that I was able to understand the context in which Sometime was recorded and released.  The ultra-leftist politics, the persecution from the U.S. Government, being put on Nixon’s sh*t list, possible deportation, etc., Lennon’s plate was pretty full.  But even in context, Sometime in New York City is still preachy, condescending, and ultimately hollow.  

Now the album isn’t all bad, of course.  I mean it’s John Lennon we’re talking about here.  And, Yoko Ono.  New York City is a terrific rocker, and sort of sequel to The Ballad of John and Yoko, and, while nothing great, The Luck of the Irish is considerably better than Paul’s protest tune.  (If nothing else, John’s sarcastic wit is on full display.)  

I’m the first to admit that I don’t understand Yoko’s avant-garde music.  And I actually hate, in a visceral kind of way, Yoko’s guttural screeches, yowls, yells, screams, etc., that she interjects in the live performances found on the bonus album, Live Peace in Toronto and elsewhere.  I not only don’t understand them, but her cacophonous racket seriously undermines Lennon’s performances.  

But on Sometime in New York City proper, Yoko abandons the avant-garde and embraces pop.  And it works.  Surprisingly, it’s Yoko’s songs that stand out.  Sisters, O Sisters is a jaunty little ditty, and We’re All Water is a bit of fun, too.  I mean, who doesn’t want to sing “…some day we’ll evaporate together”?

And then there’s the album’s first, and only single; Sometime in New York City’s opening track. 

It’s odd, perhaps, and naive surely, but coming of age in the 70s, where I did— in a suburban, middle-class neighborhood—race was something rarely if ever discussed.  Since the neighborhood, indeed the town, was nearly all white, my exposure to black people was mainly through the media.  Contrary to popular opinion, however, at least for me, blacks were represented, or rather represented themselves,  pretty much like everyone else.  Sit-coms like Sandford and Son, The Jeffersons, Good Times and What’s Happening were part of the not-to-be-missed weekly television viewing; Bill Cosby, Flip Wilson and Richard Pryor comedy records were in high rotation; Cooley High, Cornbread, Earl and Me, Car Wash, Uptown Saturday Night, Let’s Do It Again, etc. were all movies that were watched and re-watched.  All this is to say that the only single and the opening track of Lennon’s Sometime in New York City made for some quite uncomfortable listening.

Woman is the N. of the World is Lennon, once again, applying an anthem to a movement, in this case the Women’s Movement.  Given Lennon’s history with women, he hardly seems the best spokesman, and, perhaps knowing this to some extent allowed Lennon to write a song that includes him as being the oppressor; “We make her paint her face and dance.”  Of course Yoko’s influence is all over the track, the title coming directly from her.  But the song is still rather preachy and self-serving, and the title/chorus makes it a hard sell.  Indeed, many of the plethora of Greatest Hits collections put out under Lennon’s name conveniently omits the song.

The bonus live album contains an energetic version of Cold Turkey, which, unfortunately is marred by Yoko’s vocal annoyances.  A way too long version of Yoko’s Don’t Worry Kyoto is worth a listen or two for some of the jam, and the flip side, which features John and Yoko with the Mothers of Invention has one terrific version of Well (Baby Please Don’t Go) along with a couple of less interesting jams (one of which, Zappa’s King Kong, for some reason is called Jamrag.  There’s also, what sounds like an impromptu jam, with John, Yoko and Zappa singing/screaming “Scumbag,” which once prompted my father to pop into my room and shake his head in bewilderment.  In the case of the song Scumbag, I pretty much agree with him.