约翰·列侬/塑胶小野乐团 (1970)

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is the first solo album by English musician John Lennon after the break-up of the Beatles. Backed by the Plastic Ono Band (consisting of Lennon on guitar, Ringo Starr on drums, and Klaus Voormann on bass), it was released by Apple Records on 11 December 1970 in tandem with the similarly titled album by his wife, Yoko Ono. At the time of its issue, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band received mixed reviews overall, but later came to be widely regarded as one of Lennon's best solo albums.

Co-produced by Lennon, Ono and Phil Spector, it followed Lennon's recording of three experimental releases with Ono and a live album from the 1969 version of the Plastic Ono Band. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band contains a largely raw production sound with songs heavily influenced by Lennon's recent primal therapy. Its lyrics reflect Lennon's personal issues and includes themes of child-parent abandonment and psychological suffering. The tracks were recorded in September and October 1970 at Abbey Road Studios in London, simultaneously with Ono's solo album.

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band peaked at number eight on the UK Albums Chart and number six on the US Billboard 200. In 1987, Rolling Stone ranked it fourth in its list "The 100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years" and in 2012, ranked it number 23 in their list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". It was voted number 244 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). In 2000, the album was remixed with two bonus tracks, "Power to the People" and "Do the Oz". The album's 2021 Ultimate Mixes reissue, in the eight-disc Ultimate Collection box set, features 159 previously unreleased mixes, demos, outtakes, and isolated track elements.

Background

Following the break-up of the Beatles in April 1970, John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono undertook primal therapy with the guidance of Arthur Janov for four weeks at his London offices. The three then flew to Los Angeles to continue the therapy for four months. Janov's therapy technique emphasised emotionally reliving repressed childhood traumas rather than analytical discussion.

Lennon and Ono stayed in a rented house in Bel Air, keeping a low profile and committing fully to Janov's course. Lennon embraced the discipline as he had Transcendental Meditation in the late 1960s, and the act of engaging with past traumas became "too primal". Ono later commented that primal therapy helped curb his possessiveness towards her, as he recognised that his feelings of jealousy stemmed from events that took place long before they met.

With the experience he received from the therapy, Lennon was able to channel his emotions into an album's worth of self-revelatory material. In July, he started to record demos of songs that would show up on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. On 26 July, he taped numerous demos of "God", which includes the line "I don't believe in Beatles". "When a Boy Meets a Girl" was among the songs Lennon demoed at this time, but he did not record it for the album.

Lennon's therapy was never completed due to the expiry of his US visa. Janov had intended that Lennon's treatment would require a minimum of a year, such was the severity of his trauma. Janov expressed concern that the therapy had ended prematurely and that Lennon's rediscovered anger over his childhood remained unresolved.