JOHN LENNON: LIFE WITH THE LIONS (1969)
1) Cambridge 1969; 2) No Bed
For Beatle John; 3) Baby's Heartbeat; 4) Two Minutes Silence; 5) Radio Play;
6*) Song For John; 7*) Mulberry.
General verdict: Curious as an audio
document, controversial as a piece of art, useless as a listening experience.
Although this record is subtitled Unfinished Music No. 2, implying a
thematic unity with the No. 1 of Two Virgins, the goals of the two are
actually quite distinct. Two Virgins
was simply a spontaneous gesture of defiance; by the time John and Yoko got
ready to produce a second record, they seem to have worked out an explicit
purpose — make a series of audio-documents that would trace their life
together, a life now ripe with adventure, excitement, sociopolitical activity
(as the Stooges put it succinctly about 1969 — "another year for me and
you, another year with nothing to do"), and all sorts of stuff that John
could have never gotten from his previous wife (Paul McCartney). Consequently, Life With The Lions (apparently a pun
on the British sitcom Life With The Lyons,
but also a nifty way to self-aggrandize) is... well, not listenable as such, but at least, er, uhm, acquaintable, and is a good travel companion if you want to learn
more details about ʽThe Ballad Of John And Yokoʼ, or are busy reading one of
Lennon's biographies.
Granted, I have only ever been able once to sit through the entirety of
ʽCambridge 1969ʼ, which is essentially Two
Virgins taken to the stage — twenty-six minutes of John Lennon and Yoko
Ono's revenge on decadent Western society, exacted March 2, 1969, before a
living and breathing audience that largely consisted of condemned students at
the University of Cambridge. Yoko is screaming, John is producing mountains of feedback
that would put Lou Reed to shame, and later on, a couple jazz musicians,
including the well-known avantgarde saxophonist John Tchicai, join them because
apparently they had nothing better to do. The best I can say about this piece
is that it is at least better recorded than Two Virgins, and even has faint hints of thematic development...
well, at least the screaming gets more intense towards the end. As a document,
though, it is important — marking the beginning of John and Yoko as a public
live act, and laying the ground for the subsequent creation of the Plastic Ono
Band.
The second side of the album brings in
diversity. ʽNo Bed For Beatle Johnʼ is even marginally hilarious — featuring
John and Yoko chanting press clippings about themselves from their suite in
Queen Charlotte's Hospital. ʽBaby's Heartbeatʼ is a recording of the
palpitations of Yoko's miscarried child. ʽTwo Minutes Silenceʼ is,
understandably, a tribute to Cage. And ʽRadio Playʼ features twelve minutes of
toying and tampering with radio knobs, as John makes additional phone calls in
the background and life goes on as usual. Now, ain't that some major diversity
we got going over here? Theater, nature sounds, musique concrète, industrial?...
Maybe the biggest problem was that, unlike Two Virgins, Life With The Lions no longer had the chance to bring on true shock
value. Its sleeve was far more conventional, its (anti-)musical content was no
longer surprising, and it did not even begin to match the US sales of its predecessor,
because, well, the record buyers already knew far more about John and Yoko than
they ever wanted to know. The fact that a special sub-label of Apple, Zapple
Records, was set up to manufacture and promote albums like those never helped
anybody either (in a few months, Allen Klein would come into the business and,
as befits a solid businessman, stamp out all that nonsense anyway). But, once
again, it is kind of fun to look back at it half a century later, just to
remember through how much crazy stuff these guys were ripping at the time. As a
work of modern art, Life With The Lions
will probably not find a lot of support even among those who pretend to be able
to distinguish good modern art from bad modern art. But as a document, it does
a nice job of bringing that era, already so distant, back to life for a bit —
even if I still prefer to do it through 15-second snippets of each track rather
than go for suicidal overkill.
Once again, the CD reissue somewhat naïvely
tries to «musicalize» proceedings, by throwing on the very brief ʽSong For
Johnʼ (another ʽJuliaʼ-type song — apparently, John was unwilling to lend more
than one chord sequence to anything Yoko was trying to co-write at the time)
and the 9-minute freakout ʽMulberryʼ, where, instead of feedback, John goes
apeshit on acoustic slide, which is at least a more novel approach. However,
this time the additions do not even give the impression of a proper coda; they
simply add to the overall rag-taggy nature of the entire experience.
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