John Lennon: John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band [APPLE]

Why you'll love it

This Apple reissue is remastered on 180g vinyl with a printed inner sleeve carrying the lyrics and credits. The album reached No. 6 on the Billboard 200 and No. 8 in the UK, and Rolling Stone ranked it No. 23 on its 2012 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Remastered
• Printed inner sleeve with lyrics
• Pressed in Germany
• Download card included

About the album

Months after the Beatles split, John Lennon went looking for the bottom of things. He and Yoko Ono spent much of 1970 in primal therapy with Arthur Janov, first in London and then in Los Angeles, and he came out of it with a batch of songs so direct they barely bother with decoration.

Back at Abbey Road that autumn he cut them with a tiny band: Ringo Starr on drums, Klaus Voormann on bass and Lennon on guitar and piano, with Phil Spector co-producing alongside John and Yoko and Billy Preston adding piano to "God." "Mother" opens with tolling bells, "Hold On" and "Love" are tender and plain, "Isolation" and "Remember" pound away, and "Well Well Well" is about as loud as he ever got. The arrangements rarely go beyond guitar, piano, bass and drums, which leaves his voice nowhere to hide.

He made it in tandem with Ono's own Plastic Ono Band album, and the two covers are near mirror images of each other. Plenty of albums call themselves stripped back; this one took the floorboards up as well.

Also at Kops: more John Lennon on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Apple (cat# 5357094), a reissue of the 1970 album.