There’s a good chance that John Lennon could have put out anything in the 1970s, and it still would have sold out.
Okay, so maybe some of the experimental projects with Yoko Ono were going to be an acquired taste, but if fans heard that he was going to be picking up his guitar again and giving them the best mainstream songs he could, they would have picked the record up in a second. But even after years of being tuned into the zeitgeist, Lennon’s choice to move out of the spotlight wasn’t exactly by accident.
Ever since he had left The Beatles, he was already a little bit jaded about his place in the world. He and George Harrison had been doing everything they could to either downplay their god-like status among fans or, at the very least, use their position for good, but it can be a bit difficult for someone to manage their own lives when all they have to talk about is their inability to have any some of privacy whenever they walk out the door.
But that was second nature to Lennon at this point. I mean, half the reason why he chose New York City as his home was that he could be anonymous in the right circumstances, but his first trip to the Big Apple also brought out the worst in him. Some Time in New York Citywas a great protest record for the time, but since the rest of the world didn’t really want to hear what he had been doing for so long, Lennon felt that it was time for him to shake things up and work outside of his comfort zone.
Then again, it’s not like we’re talking about any other singer-songwriter. This is John Lennon, known for being one of the greatest wordsmiths of all time. He wasn’t going to mince his words on anything if he could help it, and when listening to some of the political discourse surrounding him, it’s not like he couldn’t pick his jabs wisely. ‘Working Class Hero’ and ‘Imagine’ are among the finest political songs that he ever made, but he had limits on where he could have gone.
Bob Dylan was definitely a catalyst for him in making some new and adventurous music, but there were also artists like Joan Baez who were going even further. Baez was willing to stick her neck out on the line for the real issues facing America, but when talking about the problems he had with taxes on both sides of the Atlantic, Lennon felt that he wasn’t really at liberty to speak about those kinds of issues.
He was into looking at the bigger picture, and talking about tax problems was something he would have rather left to Harrison on ‘Taxman’, saying, “The implication that John Lennon wants to come to the land of milk and honey ’cause it’s easier to pick up the money, so I can pick it up directly instead of waiting for it to arrive in England. Or Brazil. Or wherever I decide to do it. I resent the implication, especially as I’m payin’ through the nose. I don’t mind paying taxes, either, which is strange. I never did. I don’t like ’em using it for bombs and that. But I don’t think I could do a Joan Baez. I don’t have that kind of gut.”
Which is strange considering how vulnerable and open Lennon always used to be on his older records. This was the same guy who appeared fully naked on one of his album covers and didn’t bat an eye, so seeing him backpedal may have seemed strange at the time. Or, more accurately, it was a case of him trying to keep his mouth shut so the US government didn’t have more reasons to want to deport him.
But even if Lennon decided to sing the kind of lyrics he wanted to for the rest of his life, it wasn’t like anyone could have stopped him from being one of the greatest musicians in the world. There are many times when leaders try to silence artists for speaking their mind, but if their influence is strong enough, there’s no way to keep any musician down.
