John Lennon 13: Menlove Ave.

When this album appeared in the fall of 1986, it was unclear at first glance just what we were getting. Side one seemed to consist of Rock ‘N Roll outtakes, but what was with all those Walls And Bridges retreads on side two? Obviously these were all originally recorded outside of Yoko’s immediate sphere of influence; did she even know what these tracks were? (And the packaging: a clear plastic inner bag, no lyrics, limited notes, the same basic Warhol art on front and back covers…)

Looking back, she did us all a favor by putting these tracks out, and whetted the appetites of the uninitiated to the many marvelous Lost Lennon Tapes to be discovered. As it turned out, the second side is quite simply the 1974 precursor to Unplugged. These are fascinating, stripped-down run-throughs of five Walls songs, with minimal accompaniment by the cream of his post-Beatles cohorts: Jesse Ed Davis, Jim Keltner, Klaus Voormann and Nicky Hopkins. The experience is intimate and stunning. “Steel And Glass” is even more cutting here, with some vocal ad-libs that’ll curl your hair. The alternate “Bless You” is even more achingly tender, and “Scared”, “Nobody Loves You”, and “Old Dirt Road” are just as interesting.

However, side one still seems half-baked today. “Here We Go Again” is listed as a songwriting collaboration with Phil Spector, but it doesn’t live up to the hype. “Rock ‘N Roll People” is cut from the same pointless boogie cloth as “Move Over Ms. L”, with even less clever wordplay. (It was obvious John couldn’t find direction in his originals, which was another excuse to go to LA.) “Angel Baby” was on the Roots version of the Rock ‘N Roll album; he sounds drunk singing this, and he probably was. “Since My Baby Left Me” tries to get a party going and fails. Yet it’s “To Know Her Is To Love Her”, in Spector’s drastically slowed-down style (typical of his work at the time), that gives John a chance to pour out his heart, proving that perhaps he had learned something from Janov after all. This experiment, and leads perfectly into those performances on side two.

Coming the same year as the official release from the One-to-One concerts, we fans began to get spoiled. But the bounty would be limited, for Menlove Ave. was slightly ahead of its time; had they remained on the shelf in 1986, these tracks would all be prime cuts on the Lennon Anthology when it finally arrived in twelve years’ time. Or failing that, in the remastered CD era, they could have been bonus tracks for the albums themselves. (And indeed, some, but not all, were.)

John Lennon Menlove Ave. (1986)—3
Current CD availability: none