What could possibly be worse than throwing your hard-earned money down a sewer grate? Buying this colossal ripoff. Why? Throwing your money down a sewer grate does not oblige you to bring the sewer home with you.
There’s a wonderful story surrounding John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 Wedding Album. Seems a Melody Maker reviewer was sent the single album in the form of two, single-sided discs. Thinking it was a double album, the critic reviewed the two blank sides, which basically consisted of an engineer’s test signal. It speaks volumes about the album that he could make such a mistake. It says even more about the album that, although I’ve never heard the phantom sides, I am unequivocally prepared to say they’re improvements on the album itself.
The only thing interesting about Wedding Album is the packaging. An elaborate box set, designed by Apple Corps creative director John Kosh, it included sets of photos, drawings by Lennon, a reproduction of the couple’s marriage certificate, a picture of a slice of wedding cake, and a Mylar bag that had the word “Bagism” printed on it. Oh, and it also came with a booklet of press clippings about the couple. Your average wedding album does not come complete with press clippings, but your average newlyweds are not highly evolved egomaniacs. What would have been nice is if the whole fancy package had come with an actual slice of wedding cake instead of the vinyl contained within. You can’t eat vinyl, it might kill you, and in this case listening to it could be fatal as well.
Wedding Album is an unconscionable piece of work and speaks volumes about its makers’ colossal egotism. It is one thing to rip your fans off in a cynical money grab. Unscrupulous record labels looking to capitalize on a band’s popularity by releasing sub-sub-par material, with the band in question having no say in the matter, do it all the time. The scary thing about Wedding Album is it wasn’t a shameless attempt to empty your wallet. John and Yoko obviously believed their adoring fans would be grateful for the opportunity to open their wallets for this unlistenable celebration of their blessed union. There is only one word for this: narcissism. Wedding Album may well be the most narcissistic album ever released.
Why, Lennon/Ono were so narcissistic they actually managed to make the Vietnam War all about them. It was up to them to end it, because nobody else had the vision to do it. John and Yoko could do it and they would do it, by means of songs and billboards and spending their honeymoon lying in bed in a pricy hotel in Amsterdam talking errant nonsense, as they do on Side Two of this charming album. Most newlyweds do the infinitely selfish thing and go to Aruba. John and Yoko, idealists and self-appointed changers of the world, selflessly spent their honeymoon telling a thick world how to settle its differences. Not so long ago another famous narcissist, Donald Trump, said he could have negotiated an end to the American Civil War. He had nothing on the Jokos.
What you have to ask yourself about this piece of pay-per-narcissism is this: has anyone ever listened to it twice? Once foisted upon poor John Q. Beatle Fan, did a single one actually say, “That was fun! I think I’ll play it again!”? Perhaps. But what I hear is John Q. Beatle fan wailing “I’ve been fleeced!” Wanting to get in the ring for a second round would be rather like dying at the Alamo, then getting back up, dusting oneself off, and saying, “That was a roaring good time!”
Indeed, it’s hard to imagine why anyone bought the record in the first place, given that Wedding Album was the third in a series of experimental woofers recorded by the deluded duo, the first two being 1968’s Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins and 1969’s Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions, both of which received abominable reviews and sold like tinsel-wrapped dog turds. Yet sell copies it did, and what can you say except once, twice, three times a sucker? In point of fact Wedding Album broke into the US Top 200, which just goes to show that some people enjoy putting their hands on hot stoves.
What Lennon and Ono had lost sight of was the simple fact that people buy rock albums—or what they foolishly assume will be rock albums—for pleasure (and, need it be said, to hear music). People have the not unreasonable expectation that they’ll be entertained. They want to be made happier, or at the very least distracted from the great quotidian boredom of their day-to-day lives.
It’s true that there are those who have odd ideas of what constitutes entertainment. It’s a big tent. But I’m not sure it’s a big enough tent for Wedding Album for the simple reason that Wedding Album makes no attempt to be entertaining by any sane person’s measure. It’s only possible function is to allow buyers the dubious privilege of saying they own everything the couple ever committed to vinyl. It’s for slavish admirers and completists to file and look at. It’s not to be listened to. Putting it on your record player is the absolutely dumbest thing you could do with it. Shooting it would be the smartest. It’s one of the few albums I can think of that should have come with a gun.
Doubt me? I dare you to listen to side one, which goes on for almost twenty-three minutes and is diabolical in its simplicity. What you get are John and Yoko calling out each other’s names, back and forth, over and over and over again, set to the sound of their heartbeats. They vary things throughout, going from the exclamatory (“John!” “Yoko!”) to questioning (John??” Yoko?”) to loving and lusting and primal screaming and so on. Did I mention this goes on for almost twenty-three minutes? It seems I did. Very sorry. It goes on for almost twenty-three minutes!
Lennon cited Stan Freberg’s 1951 song “John and Marsha” as an antecedent, but “John and Marcia” goes on for less than two-and-one-half minutes, has musical accompaniment, and is a comedy record. “John & Yoko” is meant to break you and make you confess state secrets. It’s torture music without the music. Your defenders will invoke the magic word “Fluxus.” I would counter with the words “acid reflux.” You can call this art to the extent that art is what you say it is, and you can call it a sublime example of the art of the unbearable and I will not argue with you. What does it say about two people that they actually believed we wanted to hear their names repeated for twenty-three minutes? And pay money for the privilege? Does no one notice the elephantine egos in the room?
Side two—which consists of the one-second-short-of-twenty-five-minutes “Amsterdam”—is a more complicated beast. Recorded in the presidential suite (Room 702) at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel during the newlyweds’ honeymoon/bed-in for peace, it includes five negligible snatches of song and lots of blathering, as the couple “educate” interviewers who are sadly too dumb to understand how simple changing the world is. No wonder they sound so condescending. It’s frustrating, having to deal with people with common sense.
It opens with the sound of Yoko singing, a cappella, an early version of “John John Let’s Hope for Peace.” It’s annoying beyond words. That seems to be Yoko’s intention. For the most part she sounds like a bumblebee in agony. Meanwhile John tortures the word “peace” behind her, at some points hissing it like an enraged snake. This goes on for almost exactly five minutes. And we’re talking John and Yoko minutes, which are longer than ordinary minutes by hours. Then they go off on a long and frankly nonsensical tangent about WWII, and how all of us bear the same complicity for what the Nazis did as the Nazis do. Yoko’s lack of basic knowledge about WWII is particularly astounding. I get the idea she skimmed a Reader’s Digest article about the war once.
There are moments of unintentional levity. “Let’s get back to the future,” says Yoko at one point. Courage is necessary, she says, or “one morning we find in the newspaper that everything is going to disappear.” John’s also in rare form: “If we have to have violence, let’s channel it, you know, I don’t know how, you know, there’s other people to work out how to channel it, or give them some place to play or kill one another.” Isn’t that just like a pampered Beatle? To let someone else hammer out the banal details? It shouldn’t be too difficult, thinks John, but he’s an idea’s guy, you know?
“All you need is courage,” repeats Yoko, talking about the courage it took for her and John to lie in a comfortable bed in a posh hotel and spout nonsense. I would submit that this was not courage—it was a self-aggrandizing publicity stunt. I will gladly do it tomorrow, and I am a legendary coward, and I won’t even demand the presidential suite—any luxury suite will do. But the gist of Ono’s lecture is that you too can be courageous. Yoko: “You can just go out on the street now and take off all your clothes and say ‘Peace!’” Right. Yoko was not about to run out into the street naked and say “Peace!” She’d have been tossed in jail or committed to a psychiatric facility, neither of which are known for their haute cuisine and luxurious accommodations. Courage was risking arrest or having real violence inflicted upon your person by publicly protesting against the war. Hell, real courage is listening to Wedding Album from beginning to end. I think I deserve the Congressional Medal of Honor.
This is followed by some seagulls, some weird noise, and John saying “Stay in bed!” before giving his guitar a brutal strum. Then you get some more random noise and muttering and laughter from John, and if you’re still listening you’d better be getting paid for it. More nothing much ensues (John calls for room service, or has some minion do it for him, it’s hard to tell) until nineteen minutes or so have passed, although you do hear the briefest snippet of Ravi Shankar playing the sitar (he’s not in the room thank God, that would be truly too much, I think it’s a record).
At about the twenty-two minute mark John picks up an acoustic guitar and sings “Goodbye Amsterdam, goodbye” in a silly voice. Then Yoko sings a short snatch of “Grow Your Hair.” Then John sings an a cappella snatch of The Beatles’ “Good Night” in a Bonzo Dog Band sort of way, after which he strums the guitar and the duo do a back and forth (John: “Bed peace!” Yoko: “Hair peace!” John: “Hair peace! Bed peace! Oh, yeah…”) followed by some more electrical noise. And that’s all, folks!
Imagine no possessions? I can’t actually, but I’ll make an exception in the case of Wedding Album. Wedding Album is a product of pure hubris, and of the smug conviction on John and Yoko’s part that the public was hanging on their every last hectoring word and absurd gesture. They were self-mythologizing hucksters, their conjoined life one long “Look at us!” But they were doing it for us, can’t you see? Performing a selfless public service you could actually buy! If we would just follow their enlightened advice and imagine or dream or whatever the world would become an Eden. Simply repeat the words “War is over” and buy the single. Nothing to it.
Wedding Album is a souvenir of dubious value and nothing more—something that your hippy dippy aunt and uncle put together to commemorate their nuptials, then had the unmitigated gall to charge money for. Basically it was their way of letting us foot the bill for their wedding. And let’s face it—they were a bit off, your Uncle John and Aunt Yoko. He would tell you with a straight face that he used to be a Beatle, and she was always encouraging you to run into the street naked. You knew what she looked liked naked, him too—there they were, baring it all on Two Virgins. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve heard Wedding Album, you can’t unhear it. So do yourself a favor and don’t listen to it.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
F
