The album that will always be in Roger Waters’ “top five”

The album that will always be in Roger Waters’ “top five”

Sat 26 October 2024 16:30, UK

‘I don’t really have an opinion on the matter’; those are nine words that neither John Lennon nor Roger Waters have ever uttered. Taking his cue from the bespectacled Beatle, for better or for worse, the former Pink Floyd man has made use of the platform that rock ‘n’ roll iconology has afforded him.

 

As he says himself: “As far as my contemporaries, I am monumentally surprised how fucking scared my fellow musicians are to stick their heads out.”

 

That quote could just as easily have been proclaimed by Lennon. The Liverpudlian firmly believed that he could have an impact beyond pretty little tunes. And yet, musically, it has often been dainty melodies that have attracted both Lennon and Waters. In his solo material, Waters frequently gravitates towards humble, acoustic folk songs, even explaining, “There aren’t many rock ‘n’ roll acts I would ever listen to or care about”.

 

After the hectic fall-out of The Beatles’ break up, Lennon felt a similar way. After years of living in a whirlwind, the monumental pause of saying farewell to the Fab Four left him reconciling life in a holistic manner. The result was a John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. The cover art did a lot to explain the contents: Lennon and Yoko Ono perched against a tree, relaxing/thinking. In many ways, this is how the record sounds; it is a springlike piece of contemplation.

 

Evidently, Waters loved it. The album played into what he views as music’s pinnacle. “I think great singer-songwriter is the best part of the musical spectrum,” he told MSN Live. In many ways, this ties to his belief that a musician should “stick their heads out”, there is nothing to hide behind in this musical vein. That naked vulnerability poured out from Plastic Ono Band from the get-go.

 

John Lennon – Yoko Ono – 1970s

(Credits: Yoko Ono Lennon)

The opening track, ‘Mother’, is perhaps the most personal of Lennon’s entire career. The tune was spawned from a cult therapy that became fashionable with Lennon and the rock elite known as Primal Scream. And Lennon had plenty inside to scream about. As Yoko Ono told Uncut: “It’s just a matter of breaking the wall that’s there in yourself and come out and let it all hang out to the point that you start crying. He was going back to the days when he wanted to scream, ‘Mother’. He was able to go back to that childhood, that memory.”

 

The stirring composition is a touching wail of catharsis as Lennon laments the loss of his mother when she was struck by a drink driving off-duty policeman when he was only young and the fact his father continued a life at sea thereafter, leaving him in the care of his aunt. All of this was wrought out in a song that saw Lennon go back to his roots in more ways than one. As he told Rolling Stone in an interview upon its release: “I’ve always liked simple rock. I was influenced by acid and got psychedelic, like the whole generation, but really, I like rock and roll, and I express myself

best in rock.”