John Lennon, Yoko Ono, The Plastic Ono Band & Elephant’s Memory - Power to the People (The Ultimate Collection) Review

Unpicking the strange, messy and magnetic chapter where Lennon stepped out of Beatlemania and into something far less predictable.

Many moons ago, in a prehistoric age before streaming services were a thing, my mate lent me a dodgy CD-ROM containing the entire Beatles back catalogue. So, on a desolate winter’s eve, in the midst of teenage morosity, I booted up our mountainous family computer and, over the following weeks, methodically worked my way from the frenetic verve of ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ all the way through to the controlled groove of ‘Get Back’. It was quite a journey, and like most rational people with blood still pumping through their veins, I became a Beatles fan.

However, for a long time, the Beatles’ solo careers remained uncharted territory, with only the occasional song entering my field of hearing. Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’, McCartney’s ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ and Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ were obviously all well known to me (sorry, Ringo), but beyond that I knew little of what the Fab Four got up to after the sixties had stopped swingin’ and songs like McCartney’s ‘Frog Chorus’ made me think it was probably best it remained that way.

Of course, this was nonsense. John, Paul and George all thrived creatively without the shackles of Beatlemania weighing them down. McCartney might have racked up the most hits, and Harrison’s solo output is probably the most critically acclaimed, but Lennon’s solo career is arguably the most fascinating. Seemingly fuelled by a desire to distance himself as far from The Beatles as humanly possible, while simultaneously bringing himself closer to Yoko Ono, his first iteration as a solo artist was less a band and more a conceptual art project.

Formed in 1969, shortly before Lennon officially left The Beatles, the Plastic Ono Band featured a revolving cast of musicians, writers, friends and artists drifting in and out of Lennon and Ono’s activistic orbit. To get a good flavour of Lennon’s post-Beatles vision, look no further than debut single ‘Give Peace a Chance’ a song which serves as a kind of mission statement for the Plastic Ono Band. Recorded in Room 1742 of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal during Lennon and Ono’s now-infamous Bed-In for Peace, the track features a rabble of contributors including Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Petula Clark and even a local chapter of Hare Krishnas. A few overdubs aside, it was captured live on a portable tape recorder using just four microphones positioned around the room a world away from the meticulous, workmanlike studio discipline McCartney had propagated in The Beatles.

By today’s standards, the image of two fabulously wealthy celebrities singing for peace from their luxury hotel bed might seem a little trite, but at the time it was a genuinely powerful statement both politically and musically. Okay, so they might not have brought about world peace, but the song became an anthem for the anti-war movement and gave Lennon his first solo hit.

The Plastic Ono Band would go on to release several albums in the early 1970s, as well as conceptual films, art projects and live shows that were pivotal to Lennon’s early years as a solo artist. It’s still considered one of his most prolific periods, with songs like ‘Instant Karma!’, ‘Mother’, ‘Cold Turkey’ and ‘God’ all becoming Lennon classics.

The Plastic Ono Band & Elephant’s Memory - Power to the People (The Ultimate Collection) is a behemoth-sized 12-disc box set that attempts to harness and celebrate this era. The set centres around the 1972 One to One benefit concerts held at Madison Square Garden, Lennon’s only full-length solo concerts and his final shows with Yoko Ono. Compiled and produced by Sean Ono Lennon, Power to the People also includes jam sessions, home recordings, demos and early takes that capture Lennon adjusting to a world without McCartney.

The lesser-known Elephant’s Memory, mentioned alongside the Plastic Ono Band, refers to a scrappy New York outfit whose countercultural outlook impressed Lennon enough to make them his backing band. True to the Plastic Ono Band ethos, their playing was spontaneous, under-rehearsed and a little rough around the edges, all of which is present here. Sometimes it works, but often you’re left thinking a couple more practice sessions might have benefitted some of Lennon’s better-known songs. Still, there’s an undeniable electricity in these recordings, and Power to the People offers a fascinating snapshot of one of the most intriguing periods of Lennon’s solo career.

Of course, it’s impossible to talk about the Plastic Ono Band without mentioning its namesake, Yoko Ono. Like much of Lennon’s solo work, her presence remains a dividing line: on one side, people who despise her musical output; and on the other, people who, well, tolerate it. Ono’s abrasive vocals have always been polarising, and on some tracks they can feel like an obstacle between Lennon’s songwriting and its full potential. However, the Plastic Ono Band doesn’t exist without her, and what she lacks in musical talent she makes up for with her artistic ideologies, elevating the Plastic Ono Band into something far more interesting than just another rock and roll band. The problem is that most people tend to listen to albums for the music, not for their chin-stroking attributes. Thankfully, Lennon’s ever-reliable ability to pen a decent tune more than picks up any overly conceptual slack.

Today, we’re a little more forgiving of Ono’s contributions, and it’s only fair to acknowledge that she was an essential catalyst for Lennon’s creative awakening. Like her or loathe her, it’s impossible to separate the “Ono” from the “Plastic Ono Band”. She embodied the avant-garde freedom that powered the group and to a larger extent, Lennon himself, even if her musical contributions still left a lot to be desired.

The Plastic Ono Band represents Lennon’s seismic shift from mop-topped Beatle to politically charged activist. Whereas McCartney strived for perfection, Lennon always seemed to be searching for a higher truth. The Plastic Ono Band was an essential component of that journey, a cavalcade of activism, poetry, songs, films and primal screams. 

For those Beatles fans who’ve yet to venture into Lennon’s solo territory, Power to the People (The Ultimate Collection) isn’t the worst place to start; though to be honest, it probably works better as a collectable accompaniment for those already in the know.

John Lennon remains a divisive character. To some, his early post-Beatles output was a brutally honest self-examination of a man (quite literally, at times) screaming into the void. To others, it was self-indulgent and erratic. The truth, I imagine, lies somewhere between the two.