THE BEATLES – "The Ballad Of John And Yoko"

“Get Back” is a about a million times better than this pedestrian pub-rock shuffle, this is like a crap Kinks’ b-side FROM THE SEVENTIES. And yes, I’d like to believe Lennon’s tongue was in his cheek but, sadly, I doubt it was.

Blimey, Tom – I can’t keep up. You been overdoing the coffee?

If the one fact I know about this is right, why is it Paul McCartney playing drums on a record about John and Yoko?

The song’s embarrassing–but it has a great beat and a great hook.

Still, Rosie’s right. This made it pretty clear it was all over.

Andrew Farrell has a point, though. I’ve always thought that for someone who really, really didn’t like Yoko, Paul really puts in an enthusiastic backing vocal (in addition to the drums) in support of this tale of the Ono-Lennon’s travails, especially considering the mudslinging that ensued.

Oh look there’s some paint drying…tedious telling of a story no one wants to hear (well at least not this listener) and no musical spark at all = the worst Beatles single (not sure this should actually qualify anyway – basically John with Paul as session man).
Next…

Tom–Compelling insights on some very probable motives behind the-scenes. Perhaps the saddest and most bitter divorce in all of this was that between John and Paul. I think, too, that the entrance of Linda in the midst of this (a great photographer but hardly avante-garde and certainly no musical talent) was part of a curious attempt create a scenario that strangely parallelled J&Y. (P+L = J+Y lite)

And, oh yes, this recording really should make one appreciate how much George and Ringo really did contribute to making the group as a whole.

Seems to be the whole site thats been infected by a pirate virus.

I wonder what young kids make of this. The early boy/girl Beatle songs are as close to a universal language as pop music has; this, by contrast, with its ragged production and cryptic description of an insular world, must be baffling to a kid just starting to listen to the band.

Was this the first use of the bathroom echo effect on John’s voice? If so, it is an occasion to be mourned, since it managed to make nearly unlistenable my favorite rock and roll voice. (When he started imitating David Bowie’s phrasing a few years later, that didn’t help, either.)

The annoying production effect aside, my favorite aspect of this single is the harmony singing of John and Paul. The Beatles did so many things so very well, it’s easy to overlook how wonderful their harmonies were, almost without fail. Paul’s re-introduction of his “Lady Madonna” voice, pitched at an odd harmonic interval to John’s melody, and with Paul’s own touch of impishness in his delivery – all of that adds up to what is probably the most enjoyable part of the record for me at this late date.

On the down side, apart from what others have mentioned, I’d point out John’s lead guitar. I enjoy what he did on “Get Back,” but here he sounds an awful lot like the lead guitar player on the Bonzo’s “Canyons of Your Mind.” (They *meant* to be funny, of course – I don’t think John did.)

Having said all that, I’d still choose “The Long and Winding Road” (a.k.a., “The Long and Lawrence Welk”) as the band’s weakest #1, had that single done as well in the UK as it did in the States. Drippy melody, bombastic production, and lyrics that don’t make sense leave me grasping for anything to recommend on that one.

LOL at the bit about Jesus having had a harder time of it. The first analysis I ever read of this period of the Beatles’ career, before I’d even heard this song, was that “Lennon looked like becoming the first superstar to be destroyed by public ridicule” – i.e. not a scandal, not a drugs bust, but looking like two gurus in drag was going to bring him down.

Anyway, to return to Tom’s first sentence above, this is “the Beatles’ last number one”. It’s worth stepping back a moment here to look around and see just how enormously different the pop music landscape was at this point to the way it was seven years earlier on the eve of their first release. Music had gone in so many directions unimaginable in 1962, and almost every act in the chart in 1969 had been in some way inspired or influenced by the Beatles. As someone who just missed out on experiencing that era, I’m amazed by the fact there were only, say, three years between “From Me To You” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”, just a few years between Dylan’s first album and “Like a Rolling Stone”, between the Grease era and the hippy era, between the Shadows and Black Sabbath. Has pop or any other form of music ever developed so radically and so quickly at any other time? And what was behind it – did the drugs work, or was it the complex Sixties social development of which music was just a part? Listening to something as modern-sounding as the Pretty Things or Them developing from the blues in 1964-65, and leading on to US garage rock, would all this have happened anyway without the Beat Boom or did the Beatles influence the whole thing?

Wonderful posts, pink lord. A minor thread I’d like to pick up: combining your point about Lennon’s inside-joke tendency as a lyricist with Tom’s point about the glorified MySpace posting, and Blount ends up being OTM regarding Eminem”>Eminem – in the 30+ years between this song and the string of “Real Slim Shady,” “Stan,” and “Without Me,” was there ever another #1 so dependent on a knowledge of the performer’s biography? “John and Yoko” and “Without Me” may be catchy, yes (“Without Me” certainly moreso), but lyrically, they are deeply self-involved pieces to which it seems rather difficult to relate. (Or, as I put it in the old paper I just linked: “What exactly is the appeal of riding down the highway and singing along to someone repeating ‘Hi! My name is… Slim Shady!’ if one’s name does not happen to, in fact, be Slim Shady?”)

This kind of thing can only happen when the performer has truly crossed the line into being a superstar, an omnipresent cultural figure. In Eminem’s case he pulled this off partly by it being his goal from day one – since all of his produced work was explicitly about him, you could get caught up on the main biographical talking points pretty fast. But for “John and Yoko” to make any sense, it has to be literally true: the men from the press were following them around, and the listening public was hanging on every printed word. In other words, “John and Yoko” going #1 may be a final, astounding testament to just how fucking big the Beatles were. Not in the sense that their fanbase was so huge that it would send anything they put out to the top of the charts (see “Strawberry Fields”) – but in the sense that they were so inescapable as celebrities that a song cleverly (?) restating recent facts about one of their members would be something relevant and pleasurable.

And I may be verging into really obvious territory here, but I think this all plays up how the perceived role and place of a rock star had changed in the wake of the Beatle era. Can you imagine Brian Epstein or any other proper business type letting this sort of lyric (even without the swear) through in 1964? The Beatles weren’t even supposed to let on that they were married, let alone the details of their sordid romps around Europe. (“Oh, where do you go to, my Yoko…?”) It’s easy to point to “Help!” or “Nowhere Man” and repeat the tired cliche that here, here is the spot where pop first entered the nascent stages of being “confessional” – but you need “John and Yoko” at the other end of the story, the proof that there actually was a change afoot, and probably not for the better. Again, how much did this big shift matter, chartwise, if it takes three decades for anybody to again enchant the public with a bouncy recapitulation of well-known factoids?

(Plastic Ono Band aside, McCartney ends up coming off much better for sticking to the original plan of writing charming songs that don’t Mean much to the singer or his fans…. )

Again, how much did this big shift matter, chartwise, if it takes three decades for anybody to again enchant the public with a bouncy recapitulation of well-known factoids?

In the case of British number one singles, less than a year (“Back Home”).

Records which are essentially about the artists themselves – interesting category. Much of Robbie Williams’ output for several years can be interpreted as “funny how things work out, eh Gary?” Many a rap record is a bulletin from the rapper’s life (and death, in the case of “I’ll Be Missing You”, which stands as a mawkish number in itself but becomes truly nauseating when you think of how much money the singer made out of the subject). And I suppose “I Will Survive” benefits from a knowledge of the singer’s story.

haha tom plz not to undermine my otmness! ‘instant karma’ = ‘sing for the moment’, ‘give peace a chance’ = ‘the real slim shady’ (edge to lennon on BOTH COUNTS there!)(that’s right BOTH counts!)

When I first heard “Instant Karma” I was sure it was a Beatles song; when I first heard “Ballad of John & Yoko” I had no idea it was a Beatles song. (Of course, when I first heard Steam’s “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” I thought it was the Beatles too, so I’m not a reliable witness.)

you all know fuck-all. Ballad and Yellow Submarine are what the Beatles were all about. Get Back is too wanky to be considered a good song

Hi Lucy! Photo I received! Thanks!

I liked this. The list was great. I still love Lennon, though I generally agree with most of what was said in this article. I also got a laugh reading the one regarding the Plastic Ono Band’s record. “Like, whoa, that’s deep”.
I also thought that the use of the word “voyeurism” was clever and interesting.

I was born when The Beatles had their last No. 1. I’ve always thought it significant. Of course by the time I found this out, John was already dead. Christ, you know that ain’t easy.

Another take on Christ altogether: http://musicsoundsbetterwithtwo.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-his-hands-edwin-hawkins-singers-oh.html Thanks for reading, everyone!