Love (John Lennon) (LP 985)

John Lennon  John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band (various Vinyl and various CD formats, Apple Records, 1970) *****  

Genre: Beatle pop/ rock; Apple Records

Places I remember: DJ Records; JB Hi-Fi; Real Groovy Records

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Love

Gear costume: God

Active compensatory factors: Every song on this extraordinary album, my favourite album of all time, is, in its own way, a masterpiece.

It has an amazing after life too - its ripples continue outwards. Only last week I was in the Kinokuniya bookshop in the Dubai Mall buying a very expensive, very heavy book about this and Yoko Ono/ Plastic Ono Band (her 1970 companion album).

Imagine (the song and album) were my entry point, and I backtracked to find John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band. I approached with caution because all the stories of primal screaming had me thinking this was an Avant Garde collection of screaming.

I still remember the shock of discovery - that this was brilliance unconfined. I was a Beatle fan and now it was in full focus: I was now a John Lennon fanatic as well.

Apart from the harrowing end section of Mother and Well Well Well, it's a calmly considered series of incredibly open and honest ruminations on love, life, relationships, and music. Everything important basically.

Only John Lennon could have written and performed these songs. That he did so at the end of the sixties after eight years of continual peaks and ground-breaking sounds and songs is nothing short of super-human.

Listening to it again now, I'm struck by how timeless it is. It's stripped back to essentials in approach too - just Ringo, Klaus and John for the most part. Absolutely - less is more.

Sequencing is perfect as well. There is a healthy mix of the visceral (Well Well Well, I Found Out) with the tender and loving.

Love, gentle and vulnerable, follows Remember. My Mummy's Dead ends the album - John's pain fully evident. The Mother/My Mummy's Dead tracks bookend the album - it's back to the start, back to the womb for John and he's freed up in the process.

Then there's this albums' A Day In The Life song - God. It's a new start, a newly reborn John that emerges from this song - reality- wow, what a concept!

Remarkable. Just remarkable.

The iconic cover is perfect as well. John and Yoko at Tittenhurst - together under that spreading tree. 

I commissioned my mother to paint the scene - and her result sits in my music room at Maple Grove. I treasure it for many different reasons but the calming influence of the painted scene stays with me wherever I am.

Where do they all belong? Imagine is next.