John Lennon
Rock 'n' Roll

THE REVIEW

It's never easy to deal with an entire album of covers (objectively: was it really necessary?), especially when it's produced by an artist so beloved for what he himself has written and composed.

Subjectively, there's the pleasure of listening—raw and direct—and in this respect, things go quite well: these songs, revisited with the affection of someone who grew up with them—John Lennon was born in 1940—and in time made them his own, chewing them over without any apprehension, still move me.

From my experience, when this album came out in 1975, it was the era of “Happy Days” and “American Graffiti,” and I really enjoyed discovering a series of rock and roll classics, some of which I had already overheard because they were quite well known even here, like «Be-Bop a Lula» (from Gene Vincent, 1956) or «Stand By Me» (from Ben E. King, 1961) and «Ain’t That A Shame» (from Fats Domino, 1956), and others—the majority—that were unknown to me but would all end up in the oblivion of music I had already begun to think of as “old” compared to the “beat wave” that the Beatles themselves had started.

And yet, spurred by this album, I realized that if you brushed off the dust, there was still some “good” in those grooves. In particular, besides the ones I've already mentioned, I placed— and still would—at the top of my favorites list the energetic «Slippin' and Slidin'» (borrowed from Little Richard, 1956), then «Peggy Sue» (from Buddy Holly, 1957), and also «Sweet Little Sixteen» (from Chuck Berry, 1958), the latter rendered in a “wall of sound” version thanks to the turbulent production—in every sense—of Phil Spector. Least of all «Do You Want To Dance» (from Bobby Freeman, 1958), which Lennon did in a version with a Caribbean flavor that, for me, was rather bland.

Leaving aside my personal (listening) perspective and instead placing this ROCK ‘N’ ROLL within the context of Lennon's overall discography, I have to say this album makes me feel a bit sad today: after a dozen years of hyper-creativity, after the musical and cultural revolution of the Beatles, after the beguiling idealism of “Imagine” and the ambitious pacifism of the Plastic Ono Band, our John found himself rather drained of new ideas and full of nostalgia for those somewhat brash years when, still in his twenties, he posed as a teddy boy (just like in the cover photo, from Hamburg in 1961), and here he would (almost) close the circle of his musical adventure.

Finally, it must be said that compared to those days, we now live in a completely different world: nobody (also because of age) is nostalgic anymore for either the fifties or the seventies; all those songs are available online just a click away and this album—which still hasn't lost its sparkle—is really just a small cameo in the history of that extraordinary artist who was John Lennon. Long live John!