John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band (1970)

The first album I listened to after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that blew the World Trade Center to kingdom come and took a side out of the Pentagon was John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon's first solo album after he crawled from the wreckage of the Beatles.  While Americans of different backgrounds were calling for brotherhood  in the wake of the attacks, I was listening to "I Found Out," in which Lennon, playing a guitar riff that sounded like the tearing of flesh, angrily sneers, "Don't give me that brother-brother-brother, brother."  While people were trying to avoid sonic as well as visual representations of  violence, I heard Lennon sing "Remember," exhorting me to consider Guy Fawkes Day - "Remember, remember the fifth of November!" - followed by the sound of what would have happened to the English Parliament if Guy Fawkes's gunpowder plot had been as successful as Osama bin Laden's suicide hijacker scheme.  (Nothing sounds more ominous than a mention of the day that happens to be your birthday followed by the sound of an explosion.)  While others were soothing themselves with the balm of Enya CDs, I heard Lennon scream out loud - "WELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!"  - to the vicious guitar and bass lines of "Well Well Well."  And while other Americans sought comfort in their faith in God, I was reminded twice by Lennon in "God" that God is a concept . . . by which we measure . . . our pain.  

John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band was about pain, anger, and death, though not necessarily in that order.  It captures the disillusionment of a man angrier than but not as young as before, confronting  the collapse of the Beatles and the failed promises of  happiness and contentment.  Inspired by his and Yoko Ono's involvement  in Dr. Arthur Janov's Primal Scream therapy, Lennon stripped the music down to his guitar, Klaus Voorman's bass and Ringo Starr's drums, along with occasional piano accompaniment, and railed against everyone who had let him down and left him all the more isolated and confused - Paul McCartney, his wayward father, teachers, fans, and his deceased mother.  The music slices through air and the vocals sting like wasps, and even low-key numbers such as "Love" and "Isolation" sear hauntingly, thanks to John and Yoko's co-producer Phil Spector and his dry, reverberating sound.  John's conflict over his parents allow him to simultaneously reject his parents and beg harrowingly for them to return. Left adrift by his own fame and wealth, he realizes that love and companionship had always eluded him, allowing him to begin anew with Yoko and believe only in her and himself - and not in religion, temporal leaders, Elvis . . . and certainly not the Beatles.  The dream was not only over, it was never more than a dream.

In that sense,  John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band was the perfect album to listen to after the World Trade Center towers fell.  So much of what we put our faith in was compromised on 9/11, if not destroyed altogether, and so much of what we believed in was a lie.  Unable to confront the truth about the world, we reverted to confounding reality with hopeful platitudes and psychological comfort food.  The best thing John Lennon ever did in recording John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band was to remind us that pain can not be dealt with unless we feel our way through it, no mater how upsetting and sobering it is.  This was not only Lennon's declaration of independence from his former self, it was an exhortation for others to feel their own pain.  The record leaves no way out, from the opening funeral bells of "Mother" to the brief closing track "My Mummy's Dead," a tinny-sounding eulogy for Lennon's mother set to the tune of "Three Blind Mice" that's an appropriate act of finality.

I cry every time I hear  John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band.  There's noting soothing or re-assuring about it, not even the front cover.  Writer Jimmy Guterman once suggested that its photo, showing a content Lennon resting with Yoko under a shady tree, was "wishful thinking," but it was really more of an expression of bitter irony.