Antagonistic, beautiful, profound, visceral – just open your Mind Games… John Lennon is back
THINK about the level of creativity achieved by The Beatles in their relatively brief but stellar recording career.
You’d “imagine” that John Lennon needed a long lie-down in a darkened room after The Fab Four went their separate ways in 1970.
But far from it, he set about his solo career at fever pitch.
Freed from the constraints of being in THE band, Lennon’s freewheeling compositions took in his abiding themes of peace and love as well as passionate ruminations on politics, class, injustice and religion.
Uncompromising, visceral, authentic, beautiful, antagonistic, profound, experimental.
All these words apply at various points to the body of work he was busy assembling.
His first three albums were released within 18 months of each other — John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), Imagine (1971) and Sometime In New York City (1972 with Yoko Ono) — certainly the work of a man in a hurry.
But, by 1973, Lennon’s life had reached a crossroads.
Aged 33, he faced deportation from the US for his high-profile stance against the Vietnam War AND the incumbent president, Richard Nixon.
At home, his seemingly unbreakable relationship with Yoko Ono was about to enter an 18-month separation involving his fabled “lost weekend”.
It was against this backdrop of uncertainty that Lennon ventured into New York City’s Record Plant to record his fourth solo album, Mind Games.
He decided to use the same crack session musicians from Yoko’s Feeling The Space album.
As she developed as a visionary musician in her own right, Yoko had enlisted a more experienced bunch than the loose jam-band, Elephant’s Memory, involved in Sometime In New York City.
This, in turn, inspired Lennon to record a more commercial album with the same team, which he called the Plastic U.F.Ono Band.
Among them was his friend and session drummer Jim Keltner (currently on tour with Bob Dylan), guitarist David Spinozza and others providing bass, pedal steel, piano and saxophone.
Also on board to provide the album’s sultry backing vocals was all-female group Something Different.
Crucially, this was Lennon’s first self-produced LP and his first without Phil “Wall Of Sound” Spector at the helm.
In the decades since its release Mind Games has been regarded as one of Lennon’s lesser achievements, yet noted for its sublime title track, the quirky humour of Bring On The Lucie (Freda People) and a couple of gorgeous ballads, Out Of The Blue and One Day (At A Time).
Many of the other songs have passed listeners by — maybe people failed to notice how personal they are and how much they reveal about Lennon’s state of mind.
Now, 50 years on, the album is long overdue for reappraisal.
So the John Lennon Estate and Universal Music are releasing Ultimate Collection editions of Mind Games featuring various remixes, unreleased out-takes and instrumentals.
The raw studio mixes are especially effective, like being in the studio with the great man himself.
The collection is authorised by Yoko and produced by the only child she had with John, Sean Ono Lennon.
Now 91, Yoko reflects on her late husband’s title track from his most under-rated album: “John was trying to convey the message that we all play mind games.
“But if we can play mind games, why not make a positive future with it — to be a positive mind game?
“Mind Games is such an incredibly strong song.
“At the time, people didn’t quite get the message because this was before its time.
“Now, people WILL understand it.
“In those days, I don’t think people knew they were playing mind games anyway.”
In a new interview with Uncut magazine, Sean says the album was the sound of “my dad getting back on track, after a very experimental and volatile period.
“I grew up listening to it without realising it had, to some degree, been overlooked when it came out.
“To me, it has always been one of his strongest records.”
Depending on your level of Lennon interest, the various new editions offer something for everyone, from obsessives to the casually curious.
So it’s time to hear Mind Games again — with an open mind.
“So keep on playing those mind games together/Faith in the future, out of the now.”