John Lennon never pretended to have all the answers. While he put himself in the limelight at times for his political views, it was generally in the guise of someone who was posing opinions and beliefs that questioned the status quo, not as someone with definitive solutions.
He also displayed inquisitiveness when it came to his own life. From his 1971 album Imagine, the song “How?” finds him practically paralyzed by questions about his potential path forward that he can’t seem to answer.
Sweet Sounds and Sad Sentiments
If you just listened to the sound alone of John Lennon’s first two solo albums, you might think he’d undergone a drastic change in attitude in the year that separated their releases. But the different musical tone of the records had more to do with what Lennon wanted out of those two records.
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, which he released in 1970, was extremely stark from a musical …