Plastic Ono Band [VINYL]

Watched "Classic Albums" last night about John Lennon's "Plastic Ono Band" album (sometimes called the "Mother" album) it has confirmed what I always thought: it is John's finest work, and probably the best album made by any of the Fab Four. If you haven't heard it get it! Most of the album is just John (piano or guitar), Klaus Voorman (bass) and Ringo (drums obviously; and some of his finest work), with an appearance by Billy Preston on "God". It all sounds awesome, my favourite tracks: Isolation and of course God.

Lennon's masterpiece... in raw music terms... Imagine was more lavish, more chocolate coated, but this is Lennon laying his balls on the track, and out of sheer respect, the train stopped. I doubt if the music on this album will ever be surpassed, similar to his former work with the Beatles... absolutely brilliant!

Full of honesty, heart and love. The album explains where John Lennon was at this time in his life.

This is my favourite Lennon album. He eventually succumbed to the lovey-dovey mulch that the rest of his Liverpudlian mates had been continuing to extrude anyway in order to maintain their millions in the bank. But before that, and a long time before a deranged man killed him, he displayed that Lennon lyrical bite that only emerged just prior to the demise of the Fab 4. This album contains a lot of self truths & pain but that was what made John ( and Dylan ) different from the rest of the crowd. Back in the early 1970's I could actually allow this album in with my Stones, Freddie King, Dr John, Taj Mahal, and Jeff Beck Group albums without my musical tastes being compromised ( The Beatles were overrated and Elvis was white packaging designed to steal Rock-n-Roll from, and to suppress, genuine black talent ) and it's nice to get a download of it again. Eamonn

John Lennon was awesome under the influence of Beatles, but even more so after their split. A great loss to the music industry when he died, but his music lives on and on and on and............

The greatest genius of the Beatles is here in fully personal mode. The songs are beautiful but, often very very bleak. There is pain and loss, mourning and sadness here, but hope too. It is a masterpiece.

Had to get a refund the vinyl skipped on first play

Classic album from one of the greatest songwriters of all times. A must have in any collection.

曲は良いがタイトルはちゃんとジョン・レノンとしてもらいたかった。日本のレコード会社って勝手にタイトルつけるから嫌い。

Muy buena grabación, el álbum es excelente

Eines der Besten Alben von John Lennon, habe sogar noch die LP und eine normale CD von dieser Scheibe. Besonders zwei Lieder haben sich in mein Hirn eingebrannt, zum einen ist es "Mother" mein Lieblingslied forever und zum anderen ist es "God" was wenn man es etwas Umschreiben würde (hatte vor Jahren schon mal damit angefangen den Text zu ändern) noch Heute in unsere Zeit passen würde. Allerdings hätte ich mir diese CD nicht zugelegt wenn die Produktinformationen besser gewesen wäre. Dies ist keine SACD noch ist eine SACD-Hardware dafür erforderlich, und die Rückseite von dieser CD wäre dafür auch hilfreich gewesen. Das ist eine Originale Master Recording mit 24Karat vergoldet. Trotzdem vergebe ich 5 Sterne für diese CD, wegen des guten Albums und weil der Rezident zu blöd zum lesen bzw. zum informieren ist.

La mia copia è ben registrata e non ci sono rumori, salti di puntina etc. Il miglior album da solista di Lennon!

Why he called it "plastic", I have no idea, unless it was to signal the nihilism that pervades this mind-blower. In my opinion, this album is one of the greatest albums ever made by an individual male vocal artist, right up there with Dylan's classic holy trinity of "Bringing It All Back Home", "Highway 61" and "Blonde on Blonde". But Lennon's work holds the trump card of blunt honesty. As his Beatles career progressed, Lennon began to move away from decorative, sanitized pop expression, and toward exposing a more "real" self. However, he tended to veil it in imagery which turned out to be so clever and powerful that it resulted in some of the most brilliant pop poetry ever written, personal but perceptive too of what was happening in ever-changing 60's society. I cite as examples "Norwegian Wood", "Nowhere Man", "Strawberry Fields", "Lucy in the Sky", "A Day in the Life", "I Am the Walrus", "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", "Come Together", "Across The Universe" and "I Dig a Pony". Releasing "Plastic Ono Band", with Yoko as his muse and his enabler, he was liberated from the shackles and trappings of Beatledom, and he showed his feelings as nakedly as the couple had shown their physiques on the cover of "Two Virgins". The torrent of hurt, fear, anger, bitterness, contempt, and rejection of his past was harrowing yet thrilling when I first heard it, like a rush. In "Mother", he not only laments very loudly that his parents had abandoned him, but also that he was now abandoning US: "Children...I just gotta tell you goodbye, goodbye." After this trauma, John's first rule of survival in this godawful world is in the second track, "Hold On". He sings, "When you're by yourself/And there's no one else/You just have yourself/And you tell yourself to hold on." Illusions are shattered in "I Found Out", to the accompaniment of some very primitive, grating rock: "There ain't no Jesus gonna come from the sky/Now that I found out, I know I can cry." The somber, sarcastic folk song "Working Class Hero" is a classic, right on the mark. My favorite track, "Remember", hits us with pounding drums, pounding bass and pounding piano, to make us recall the hypocrisy and fairy-tale foolishness of things we endure growing up in bourgeois society: "Remember how the hero was never hung/Always got away...how the man always, always let you down...Remember ma and pa, just wishing for movie stardom/Always playing a part?" In the midst of all this fear and loathing, Lennon takes the time to describe "Love", and more importantly, places the words in a delicate melody which floats, rises and falls with all the beauty of any Beatles ballad. In "Well Well Well", we hear of a typical day in the life of John Ono-Lennon, ex-Beatle, activist, comrade of Yoko, accompanied by raw, rough rock and including the famous "primal screams". "God" is the finality of all finalities. With bluesy piano backing, Lennon declares that he doesn't believe in God, Dylan (Zimmerman), Tarot, I-Ching, Buddha, Kennedy, nothing and nobody except himself and Yoko. In a climactic moment in pop history, he sings, "I don't believe in BEATLES...And so, dear friends, you'll just have to carry on. The dream is over." As bonus tracks, we get "Power to the People", which I have always liked since my own pseudo-radical days, and "Do the OZ". I would describe the latter, a duet with Yoko by the way, as an avant-garde rock parody of dance songs like "The Hokey Pokey". But as silly as it seems, it also mirrors the new, wild impulsiveness in John's heart and the absurdity he finds in the world. Taken as a whole, this outpouring transcends pop music. In its own way, this is art, just as the writings of Shakespeare, Coleridge, and T.S. Eliot are art. Lennon found a way to be lyrically real, musically authentic (raw, no frills, to match the emotions), and entertaining all at the same time, and that is an accomplishment most pop or rock stars would sell their souls for. In addition, the entire CD package is a class act. The sound is magnificent, the cover is gorgeous, the wonderful photos inside are new to me, and the lyrics provided are from John's own notes. For any fan of John Lennon, this is a treasure and a must-have.