John Lennon - John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
- FaceOff - עימות חזיתי
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Written By: Moti Kupfer
Release date - 11.12.1970
"I don't believe in Elvis. I don't believe in Zimmerman. I don't believe in Beatles…The dream is over…you just have to carry on."
In 1970 John Lennon went through a process of emotional purification, a process he described in a direct, honest, and at times brutally raw way on his first solo album “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band”, released on December 11, 1970.
By mid 1969 it had already become clear to John Lennon that he and "The Beatles" belonged to the past. In September 1969 he shared his intentions with the rest of the band, agreeing not to announce it to the press yet, due to various contractual obligations.
A few more months would pass before curious journalists, who had heard a rumor claiming that Paul McCartney was dead, arrived at his farm to verify the story, only to walk away with a completely different scoop: "The Beatles no longer exist."
At the same time, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were fighting for survival. Survival in life, and survival as a couple. Yoko, after two miscarriages, was struggling for custody of her daughter Kyoko, while Lennon was coping with the dissolution of "The Beatles", and with the ghosts from his past, that refused to release him: the abandonment by his father, the loss of his mother, all of it intensified by heavy drug use (heroin, methadone).
Yoko understood that if she would not do something drastic, not only that their relationship will be doomed, but John’s life itself might soon become a memory.
In March 1970 she called (from Tittenhurst Park, where they lived),the American psychologist Arthur Janov, in Los Angeles. Janov, author of the book "The Primal Scream", believed that in order to heal psychological and physical trauma, a patient must release the earliest experiences stamped into them since birth.
Yoko Ono realized that Janov was likely the only solution capable of rescuing her partner from the deep psychological crisis he had fallen into, and decided to approach him. At first Janov, who did not know Lennon or "The Beatles", refused the request, but eventually his children convinced him to treat Lennon and enjoy, along the way, his fifteen minutes of fame. No one imagined that Janov’s method, considered unconventional at the time, would later become widely popular.
Janov recalls that when he arrived at the estate where the couple lived, Lennon was sunk in despair, addicted to heroin, unable to leave his room.
He began treating him, encouraging Lennon to release his emotions through screaming and crying. Much of the therapy took place in the recording studio inside the estate, which quickly translated into the songs in which Lennon cries out to the father and mother, who were not there for him when he needed them so desperately, most powerfully in "Mother".
Almost all the songs Lennon wrote for the album are influenced by the treatment: free of wordplay, direct and honest, touching, dealing themes of love ("Love"), faith and doubt in God ("God"), loneliness ("Isolation"), and the end of the dream of the Fab Four from Liverpool ("God" again). There is also the moment when Lennon tries to construct his new self as a working class hero who does not owe anyone anything, even if it means cursing the whole world and his wife, in "Working Class Hero".
Lennon recorded the album together with bassist Klaus Voormann, his old friend from the early Hamburg days of "The Beatles", as well as Ringo Starr, Billy Preston who was the unofficial fifth "Beatle" for a brief moment of glory, Phil Spector, and of course Yoko Ono.
Years later two young musicians, inspired by the story of Lennon and by Janov’s book itself, founded the band "Tears for Fears", whose concept was based on "The Primal Scream". About two more years would pass before a rock band in Glasgow adopted a name drawn from the same source, the alternative dance and rock group "Primal Scream".
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