So many records that influenced me when I was a pre-teen and teenager were second-generation interpretations. I heard Eric Clapton before I heard Freddie King, I heard John Fahey before I heard Skip James, and I heard the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band before I heard Muddy Waters.
The John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album is possibly one of the first punk records ever. Released in 1970, along with its almost visually identical sister record, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, Lennon’s album was influenced by primal-scream therapy, and it became his chance to expose his eruptive underbelly without compromise. To me, it’s also an underrated guitar record. It influenced me as a player, and it’s uncompromising bravery influenced me as an artist.
“I Found Out” resembles a Muddy Waters dirge, and the chorus has a guitar part as crude as serving dinner guests raw meat dripping with blood. Lennon’s guitar has more fuzz than notes, and his “solo” is a series of repetitive stabs that taught me less can be way more.
“Well Well Well” is another great guitar track. Lennon plays mangled double-stops that support his vocals, and this kind of primal playing really rocked my 12-year-old world. It still sounds incredible to me today. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is not all raw meat, however. “Hold On” has a lovely, vibrato-laden pentatonic guitar that sounds like Curtis Mayfield through a blender, and “Look at Me” has a “Julia” [Beatles] vibe, but it’s delightfully more direct.
I’m amazed that “Mr. Wall of Sound,” Phil Spector, produced this stark-sounding album. Ringo said that Spector arrived on the second day of recording, after Lennon, bassist Klaus Voorman, and himself had already established the record’s bare-bones sound. Kudos to Phil for not messing around