Opening the last track of his album Rock ‘n’ Roll, John Lennon reminisced, “Do you remember this? I must have been 13 when this came out…” I think that’s the perfect summary of this album. It’s a nostalgia-trip that treats rock and roll like a novelty, from someone who clearly hasn’t been rock and roll in a very long time.
I didn’t go into this album expecting to dislike it. John Lennon was very vocal in the last few years of his life that the Beatles were sell-outs that gave up on rock and roll, and I agree with him on that. The closest they got is on Twist and Shout, and that’s because John is singing. So it seemed to me that once he was on his own again, he’d be able to make a good rock and roll album.
The first thing I noticed was the album cover. It reminds me of old black and white Beatles photos from when they were playing in Hamburg, where they went insane. At the time they played there, between 1960 and 1962, Hamburg was mostly strip clubs and bars. They would play 8 hours a night and perform drunk and on pills most of the time.
Luna DiFonzo, a U-32 Senior, was taken by the album cover too. “I was extremely weirded out by… the album cover,” she said. “It’s John Lennon looking not like how I’m used to him looking.” He’s dressed like Gene Vincent, in a leather jacket and pants. This was how the Beatles dressed in Hamburg, before their manager Brian Epstein made them wear suits to get on television.
As for the music, “I was expecting something crazier. Something like… Yoko Ono’s music.. where it was terrible,” Luna said. “So it made me feel like.. John Lennon lived a life that… I didn’t know he lived, which was him as a greaser with slicked-back hair.”
I would imagine that a lot of people in the ‘70s also forgot that John Lennon started off playing rock and roll. It turns out a lot of people at U-32 today forgot this as well.
Lisa LaPlante, Director of Student Services, described John Lennon’s music as “forceful, knowledgeable, but in a calm manner; wanting to get his point across, but not in your face.”
Similarly, Cathy Guiffre, a math teacher at U-32, said it was “very mellow, very peaceful, trying to get some things across to people.”
To continue this idea, Drew Frostick, a senior, said the songs he knew were “soothing and kind of calm. It doesn’t really make you feel many emotions, just present.”
Overall, it seems that many people, at least at U-32, believe John Lennon’s music to be calming. So he definitely had something to prove in making Rock ‘n’ Roll. This is where we run into the first major issue with the album:
The British never got rock and roll. You can’t sing about Memphis, Tennessee, or deep down in Louisiana if you’re from the UK. It’s so clear that they’re phonies. Rock and roll is American.
John Lennon covers a lot of standards on this album. But they don’t even touch the originals.
The recordings Elvis did for Sun Records make you feel like you’re on a mystery train 16 coaches long, trying to get your baby. Or they have the energy of the first Ed Sullivan performance that got him banned on the show from the waist down. For Elvis, his music and the way he moved were the same thing. Gene Vincent was the same way, but with his voice.
Little Richard had a different energy entirely. He made rockers. He was crazy, but in a harmless way.
Buddy Holly was different too. It’s more doo-wop rockabilly. His songs are pure and sweet. Fats Domino shares that warmth, in a swing kind of way.
Out of all of the early rock and rollers, John Lennon seemed to like Chuck Berry best. In 1972, he went on the Mike Douglas Show saying, “if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.’” It’s a pretty common consensus that Chuck Berry was one of the people that created the style.
However the artist does it, they take you somewhere. One of the biggest parts of music is believing what you’re being told, but I don’t believe what the British are saying. And I especially don’t believe John Lennon.
To make that even worse, in this album you can tell that John Lennon is mean. He’s metallic and cold. He’s terrible. He kills all of the joy in the songs he covers.
I spoke to Angus Kurts, a U-32 senior in early college at Norwich, about his thoughts on the songs.
Listening to the album, he said, “felt like I was wearing a pot on my head, and the pot was getting banged on.” Which is to say it’s aggressive, but not in a bad way.
He was familiar with the original recordings of most songs, and elaborated on a few.
“Be-Bop-a-Lula,” he said, “was very chaotic, but you could definitely tell that it was paying homage to Gene Vincent.” He also expressed that it definitely wasn’t better than the original.
Compared to Buddy Holly, “John Lennon’s [“Peggy Sue”] is lower and grittier and more edgy. It has more of a bite,” he said. “I don’t think I would really have an opinion on it just as a song. It would just kind of be a song. It wouldn’t really stick out to me. But I think the contrast is what makes it stick out from the original.” I agree with this entirely, for every song.
To me, the songs already exist in a perfect state. If you’re going to cover them, you obviously need to put your own spin on them, which John Lennon did. But you still have to honor what makes the songs so mystifying. And John Lennon doesn’t do that.
Luna put it perfectly; “This is garbage. Why don’t you play the normal one?”
