John Lennon Acoustic (2004) & Rock ‘n’ Roll (1975)

From pitchfork.com

I could see how releasing John Lennon discs called Acoustic and Rock ‘n’ Roll on the same day might have seemed like an insane stroke of integrated-marketing genius– “Why, it would almost be as cool as the Bright Eyes double-weeper!” some pony-tailed Capitol exec may have exulted– but these releases seem to have little to do with one another.

Hardly the polished, definitive statement that its title and cover photo imply, Acoustic culls demos and live tracks from 1998’s Anthology box, plus seven previously unreleased recordings. Much of the material draws from Lennon’s most raw album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, recorded after primal scream therapy with Dr. Walter Janov. The new disc’s most visceral moments– a bitter, desolate blues waltz of “Working Class Hero” and a finger-blistering, previously unreleased “Cold Turkey”, on which Lennon’s wavering, sheepish-lion vocal veers closely to Marc Bolan– predict the spare sneer of punk, even without amplification.

By comparison, Rock ‘n’ Roll sounds like “Crocodile Rock”. Here, Lennon revisits his roots, complete with the heavy, 50s-style echo he was employing on much of his original work (“Instant Karma”, for example). The now-familiar backstory to this satisfying (if less-than-brilliant) outing is that an out-of-court settlement with Morris Levy, owner of several Chuck Berry copyrights, required Lennon to record three songs to which Levy owned the rights. (Levy had charged, quite rightly, that Lennon’s “Come Together” cribbed from Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me”.) Phil Spector produced four of the album’s tracks, while Lennon handled the rest. Despite the legal obligation, Lennon’s performance never sounds forced; instead, he sounds unfettered, barnstorming through the favorites of his youth with the gleeful abandon he must have felt when, while listening to Radio Luxembourg, he first heard “Heartbreak Hotel”.

While Rock ‘n’ Roll is a wistful look at rock’s lost innocence, Acoustic hunkers down in the humdrum here-and-now of 1970s existence. “All right, so flower power didn’t work,” Lennon tells a live audience between the off-kilter protest songs “The Luck of the Irish” and “John Sinclair”, both originally on Anthology. “So what? We start again.” The fallout of the failed 60s left Fear and Loathing and Las Vegas’s Raoul Duke mired in drugs and depravity; Lennon ultimately turns, creatively enough, to “reality,” as described in the oft-quoted “God”. The version here, previously unreleased, opens with twangy guitar as Lennon goofs an impression of a Southern preacher. The accidental distortion that kicks in on the bass during Lennon’s powerful, repetitive “I don’t believe” sequence vaguely brings to mind Neil Young’s haunting Dead Man theme. Interestingly, Lennon replaces “I don’t believe in Zimmerman” with the less cryptic “I don’t believe in Dylan.” As always, the song concludes with Lennon’s statement of faith in himself. Still, this is a drop in recording quality compared to the Anthology version.

Among other previously unreleased tracks, the nursery-rhyme melody of “My Mummy’s Dead” stands out against a stark, slightly crackly background. “Dear Yoko” (as opposed to “Oh Yoko!”, which you may know from the Rushmore soundtrack if not from Imagine) suffers from fuzzy tape noise that Capitol’s sound engineers couldn’t remove. The song’s straightforward message of love still shines through– “I miss you like the sun don’t shine”– but casual listeners would be better served by the Double Fantasy version. “Well Well Well” becomes a heavily phased, forgettable one-minute run-through of the Plastic Ono Band original. Pop gem “Real Love” is informative as a demo, though it will merely leave you heading back to The Beatles’ 1996 version with fresh ears– it’s proof that Paul, George, and Ringo didn’t fuck that one up, after all. On the plus side, you don’t know “What You Got”, originally from Walls and Bridges, until you hear this percussive, bluesy rendition.

On “Watching the Wheels”, Lennon fleshes out the solipsistic themes hinted at in “God”. Whether or not his years of domesticity were as blissful as advertised, I don’t really care. It’s a song that Holden Caulfield might have sung after realizing he couldn’t smear out every F-word, a song about being true to oneself. If only Catcher in the Rye-obsessed maniac Mark David Chapman had understood, I like to think we might be listening to a new, blissfully mediocre release by a 65-year-old Lennon rather than a rarities compilation. This recording– originally released on Anthology and the “Unplugged” bootleg– strips away the hopelessly dated production of the Double Fantasy version. What’s left is poetic, melodic, homespun– it’s what diehard fans of any band look for but rarely ever find in a demo. Even brief background chatter from Yoko can’t throw a Spaniard in these works– instead it adds intimacy to the proceeding. It’s my new favorite Lennon recording, at least until the next time I listen to Imagine.

Nothing on Rock ‘n’ Roll matches that moment, but it has a breathless energy all its own. The remixing and remastering is clearly noticeable– for instance, the cover of Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-a-Lula” sounds infinitely clearer and brighter here than on the original album. With its staccato acoustic guitar and Lennon’s fervent vocals, “Stand By Me” remains more affecting (just barely) than the Ben E. King rendition. Much criticism has been hurled at the album’s ubiquitous brass, but on the new recording, bouncy horns and newly vivid bass enliven even previously unspectacular songs like “Ya Ya”, although the cod-reggae “Do You Wanna Dance” will forever be a concept by which Lennon fans measure their pain. “You Can’t Catch Me”– the song that necessitated this album in the first place– is a solid footstomper.

The four bonus tracks are welcome, but will leave little to satisfy Lennon cultists. “Angel Baby”, a swooning ballad from the cringe-worthy posthumous release Menlove Ave., should have been on Rock ‘n’ Roll in the first place. (It had appeared on Levy’s unauthorized Roots: John Lennon Sings the Great Rock & Roll Hits release.) Unfortunately, “Be My Baby”– one of the most legendary cuts from Roots– is still absent; completists already own it on Anthology, but that’s no excuse. “To Know Her Is to Love Her” is another slow, pleasantly schmaltzy Menlove Ave. track, while “Since My Baby Left Me” is a bouncy version of a cut from that comp. “Just Because (Reprise)” is really nothing more than a bizarre alternate ending. “I’d like to say hi to Ringo, Paul, and George,” John says, possibly drunk. “How are you?” This earnest, slightly silly snippet captures the record’s tossed-off joie de vivre– even if it’s not as Rock ‘n’ Roll as, say, Acoustic.