(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Thu 11 December 2025 20:00, UK
When The Beatles finally decided to call it a day, no one seemed to be more relieved than John Lennon.
The Fab Four had not been seeing eye-to-eye for a while, and despite still coming together to make masterpieces like Abbey Road, it was clear that all of them needed to branch out and start doing their own things. And while Lennon was ready to make his bold statement to the world, he did have more than a few rough edges to work through before he even touched a guitar again.
Before the band even broke up, there were hints that Lennon was starting to grow tired of being the head of this four-headed monster. ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ from Revolver already showed how much he was over being in the greatest band in the world, and while he did have fantastic songs on each subsequent record, you could tell that his heart was far more invested in making the outlandish avant-garde music that he made with Yoko Ono.
It’s completely fair for him to want to move on, but it’s not like those records are exactly listenable, either. Two Virgins and Life With the Lions are incredibly demanding listens, and while The Wedding Album does have the added benefit of hearing the couple’s perspectives on the peace movement, it’s not like he was going to make the next answer to ‘Dear Prudence’ or ‘Revolution’, either.
That’s because he had a lot of his own troubles to work through, and when primal therapy cracked his subconscious wide open, he was a completely different songwriter in many respects. He had put up certain barriers when he first started writing with Paul McCartney, but whereas ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘In My Life’ were subtle glimpses into his life, Plastic Ono Band blew all those closed gates wide open.
From front to back, every song on the record was Lennon getting to say his piece on why the band broke up. He had a lot on his mind by the time that everything ended, and whether that was his new life with Yoko, his complicated relationship with his parents, or his own status as a rock and roll star, nothing was off the table when it came to sorting out the pieces of his fractured mind.
And while Imagine did end up giving Lennon more hits, he felt that a lot of what turned up on his first commercial solo album deserved a place next to his greatest hits, saying, “I came up with ‘Imagine’, ‘Love’, and those Plastic Ono Band songs – they stand up to any songs that were written when I was a Beatle. Now, it may take you twenty or thirty years to appreciate that; but the fact is, these songs are as good as any f*****g stuff that was ever done.”
Most people may have been a bit shocked hearing songs like ‘Mother’ and ‘Working Class Hero’ circa 1970, but with over 50 years of hindsight, Plastic Ono Band is one of the best-aged solo albums any Beatle ever made. While some fans were going to need to get used to the shouting on songs like ‘Well Well Well’, hearing beautiful songs like ‘Isolation’ next to the musical freakouts gives the album the same feeling of a modern alternative pop album than a classic rock piece.
Some of that Beatles magic was still there, but if Lennon had his way, the rest of the world would have paid much closer attention to that final stanza at the end of the song ‘God’. The Beatles were a myth that had worn out its welcome, and the only way for Lennon to keep making music was to move on.
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