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John Lennon’s Campaign Song: “Come Together”

26 September, 2016 - 0 Comments

In October 1973, John Lennon enlisted the help of infamous producer Phil Spector to record an album. However, it didn’t all go exactly to plan for Lennon as he had recently split from Yoko Ono, became a regular at clubs all around Los Angeles, and fashioned a reputation for drunken antics as he slipped into his self-proclaimed “lost weekend.”

Meanwhile, a rapidly deteriorating Spector wasn’t holding up much better. He took the tapes from the sessions that they had actually managed to record and left Lennon with nothing. Ordinarily, this would have been bad enough, but the threat of legal action already hung over the former Beatles member’s head. “It started in ’73 with Phil and fell apart. I ended up as part of a mad, drunken scene in Los Angeles and I finally finished it off on my own,” Lennon later told Rolling Stone. “And there were still problems with it up to the minute it came out. I can’t begin to say, it’s just barmy. There’s a jinx on that album.”

The record, which would finally go on to be released in 1975, was entitled Rock and Roll and featured 13 covers from the ’50s and ’60s which Lennon had a particular fondness for. The whole reason for it being made in the first place though stemmed from six years earlier when the Beatles were recording Abbey Road. Come Together was the first track on the album which was released 47 years ago this week [September 26th]. Initially devised as a campaign song for psychologist and political activist Timothy Leary, Lennon changed it significantly once he got it into the studio.

In June 1969, Lennon conducted a “bed-in” with his wife Yoko to promote peace in the world. Among the guests who came to see him at his hotel where he was staying was Leary. Seen as a key component of the counterculture movement of the ’60s, Leary had designs on getting into power. He visited Lennon in the hope that the Beatle would be able to write a campaign song for him, as he plotted against Ronald Reagan in the race to become governor of California.

By: Mark Molyneux

Source: Howl and Echoes

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