Listening to Lennon #5: Walls and Bridges

Lennon recorded Walls and Bridges back in New York City, in the summer of 1974, after having lived for most of the previous year away from Yoko Ono in Los Angeles. He and Yoko had not reconciled yet--that wouldn't happen until long after Wall and Bridges was completed, in February of 1975--but many tend to hear in the songs of this album echoes of Lennon's separation from his chosen partner, both in its occasionally wild, funky celebrations of excess and freedom, and in its self-pitying, mournful moments. I actually tend to disagree--to my ears, Walls and Bridges is an experimental and wide-ranging solo album, one whose tracks often sound disassociated from the musical styles and patterns that John had built over the years with the Beatles and on his own. I was genuinely surprised at how much I liked it.

Of course, for someone who had recorded such strange music as the albums he produced with Ono at the end of the 1960s--Unfinished Music No. 1, Unfinished Music No. 2, and Wedding Album--the tracks on Walls and Bridges wouldn't seem experimental at all. But within the bounds of pop music, they count, I think. Walls and Bridges shows a Lennon being brassy and funky in the style of Sly and the Family Stone, being soulful and country in the style of the Flying Burrito Brothers, and crooning and belting like either Elvis Presley or Tom Jones (he absolutely was not wrong when he said that "Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out)" should have been sung by Frank Sinatra). Listening to the album, and hearing--yes, along with his conflicted, sometimes bitter, sometimes profoundly depressed, feelings over Yoko--his familial joy at reconnecting with Julian, his son by Cynthia (May Pang, John's sexual companion and general assistant during the "Lost Weekend," brought Julian out from London), and his naughty pissant joy of having a pack of drinking buddies again, and maybe most of all the genuine joy that being able to hang out, however briefly, with Paul and Linda McCartney once more obviously elicited from him--with all that nasty Beatles stuff behind them, even Lennon was ripping on Allen Klein by this time--all just makes me wonder. What if John had stayed in LA to record Walls and Bridges? What if Phil Spector hadn't gone through a mental breakdown and he and Lennon's 1973 Los Angeles sessions--which would eventually give rise to Lennon's next album, Rock 'n' Roll--had actually worked out? The Lennon of this stage of his life was even willing to perform a Beatles song live, thanks to the prompting of Elton John; who knows what this alternative future might have held?

Well, whether or not any new Lennon-McCartney compositions would have been possible along that road untaken, the compositions in Walls and Bridges deserve respect. "Going Down on Love" is a groovy song about sex with lyrics that are all about unfulfillment; its balance between giggling winks and self-pity is classic Lennon. I actually don't love "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night," despite it being John's only American #1; Bobby Keys's saxophone is terrific, of course, but all those horns just make me think of bandleader G.E. Smith opening an episode of "Saturday Night Live." "Old Dirt Road," "What You Got," "Scared," and "#9 Dream" are all first-rate pop songs, in turns moody, atmospheric, driving, and/or head-poppingly good. It's not all great, to be sure; "Steel and Glass" is just a retread of Lennon trademarked vituperation, and I think "Bless You," though apparently Lennon's favorite track on the album, is just sappy. (By contrast, Lennon, after he reconciled with Ono, labeled "Surprise, Surprise (Sweet Bird of Paradox)," his love song to May Pang, as "just a piece of garbage," but I think it's okay, certainly no worse than a dozen other middling Beatles love songs.) "Beef Jerky" is a fun instrumental, much better than some of the pointless noodling on earlier Lennon albums. And "Nobody Loves You," while perhaps not a masterpiece on the level of "Imagine" or "Jealous Guy," absolutely shoots for those heights, and is a worthy competitor.

Walls and Bridges gets a high B, maybe even a B+. This is a really solid piece of work, better than anything he'd done in the previous three years. I don't know if direct comparisons are applicable, but if we sit my rankings of Lennon's and McCartney's solo discographies side by side, and note that it took McCartney five albums before he finally produced Band on the Run, Lennon's talent might be edging poor Macca aside.