Aural Fixations

JOHN LENNON
Rock'N'Roll
Acoustic
(Apple/Capitol)
With John Lennon almost 25 years in the grave, the task of Keeper of the John Lennon Legacy falls to his widow, Yoko Ono. Ms. Ono has been excoriated ruthlessly over the years as the woman who broke up the Beatles (as if the escalating tensions between Lennon and Paul McCartney had nothing to do with it), a no-talent hack disguised as an avant-garde artiste (no comment, since I've not heard her solo work) and the One Who Sold Out John Lennon by licensing his songs for commercial use. While the moral merits of the latter are certainly debatable—that is, if anyone really gets his or her dander up anymore over hearing a so-called classic used as background noise in a beer commercial—one could also point out that the Lennon Legacy is Ono's means of support. I don't know what the Beatles' royalty statements look like these days, but if she wants to supplement her income by releasing John Lennon albums, who's to say she doesn't have the right to do so?

Especially when she's leading off this year with a remastered reissue of Lennon's covers tour de force Rock'N'Roll. In the early 70s, separated from Ono and needing to recharge his creative batteries, Lennon took to the studio for a lark, recording a baker's dozen tracks pulled from his days hammering out rockabilly and R&B covers in German working man's clubs in the late 50s and early 60s. You'd think the result would be fluff, enjoyable but insubstantial, but damned if this isn't one of Lennon's best records. The ex-Beatle didn't just knock these tunes out; he put effort and passion into them, resulting in some great tracks. Some tunes are faithful to the originals. The medley of Little Richard's "Rip It Up" and "Ready Teddy" sounds ripped from the mid-50s roadhouses that spawned this kind of lacerating R&B, and Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-a-Lula" is appropriately bathed in a sea of reverb. But Lennon effectively mucks about with other songs. He morphs Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me" into a bluesy near-epic that seamlessly interpolates lyrics from his own "Come Together." He turns Larry Williams' "Bony Moronie" into a sensual R&B groover and Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue" into a freight-train raver. He even makes Bobby Freeman's "Do You Wanna Dance" into an odd but effective pop tune with rhythms borrowed from African sources (years before such a move would be trendy, by the way). And of course there's the most famous track, Lennon's passionate take on Ben E. King's "Stand By Me;" it's easy to imagine his soulful vocals here given extra weight by his yearning for Yoko. Speaking of whom, she adds bonus cuts to the reissue, including a lovely, faithful version of the doo-wop classic "Angel Baby," a strangely dirgelike but unusually passionate take on Phil Spector's "To Know Her is to Love Her" and a party-time run through Arthur Crudup's "Since My Baby Left Me." The sound is crisp and clear without compromising the (mostly) stripped-down presentation, and Lennon's singing is simply great throughout. Major kudos to Ono for bringing Rock'N'Roll back from the dead. [buy it]

We may have to give her some demerits, however, for Acoustic. The idea is sound: put together a collection featuring Lennon with just voice and guitar, and even include chord charts for aspiring folk singers. You'd think that stripped-down versions of some of his most famous songs and some obscurities would result in some revelatory moments, but you'd be wrong. Most of these cuts are taken from demos and home recordings and sound like it, and I don't mean that in a good way. Besides the subpar sound of most of the tracks, many of the performances simply aren't up to snuff. Lennon rushes through "God," ordinarily one of his most powerful numbers, as if he needs to get it down quickly before his next hair appointment. He performs "Dear Yoko" fairly well, but the bad recording makes his guitar sound like a batch of sewing needles bundled together. "Well Well Well," "Woman is the Nigger of the World" and "It's Real" (with whistling replacing actual vocals) are mere fragments, not even really songs yet. The horrid recording quality of the "Cold Turkey" demo completely sinks it. One could argue that the inclusion of these tracks gives diehard fans a glimpse into Lennon's creative process, but, frankly, that's crap—there's no reason to listen to these cuts more than once, and no reason to hear this version of "Cold Turkey" at all. Not everything is trash, though. There are decent solo acoustic takes on tunes like "Working Class Hero," "Love" and "Real Love," while live recordings of "Imagine," "The Luck of the Irish" and "John Sinclair" (the latter two recorded at a Free John Sinclair rally) muster the passion the rest of the collection lacks. But with the possible exception of "Imagine," even these are hardly essential; either the performances or the songs themselves are second rate. Frankly, the only cut here worth repeated listens is a folky take on "Watching the Wheels." It doesn't help that many of these tracks are already available as part of the Lennon box, so the obsessive fans this set is designed for will buy much of this music twice. And that highlights the record's biggest flaw: Acoustic exists only to shift units and squeeze some more money out of the Lennon faithful. There's nothing revelatory here, nothing the world couldn't have lived without hearing. It sounds like a dumping ground for whatever recordings Yoko found lying in the archives; ultimately Acoustic is as uninspiring as its title. So thanks, Ms. Ono, for rescuing Rock'N'Roll from obscurity and giving it the new life it deserves, but no thanks for a package as slapdash and careless as Acoustic. Michael Toland [buy it]