10 Rock Albums That You Were Never Supposed To Hear
3. Rock n Roll - John Lennon
Ever since his departure from the Beatles, John Lennon was always one to follow his own muse wherever it took him. No matter if it was some avant garde experiment with Yoko Ono or a subtle glimpse back to his pop magic, you could never really say that his music didn't come from the heart most of the time. With the exception of Rock n Roll of course.
Originating from a lawsuit going all the way back to Come Together off of Abbey Road, Lennon's sentence for allegedly ripping off Chuck Berry was to end up recording a few songs of other rock standards and donating the proceeds to his estate. While the sessions in Los Angeles started with the best of his intentions, this was the beginning of Lennon's infamous lost weekend, where he got into much more drinking and hellraising than he bargained for while being separated from Yoko.
As he got into spats with producer Phil Spector and eventually moving out of LA altogether, Rock n Roll is basically everything that was salvageable about the project, from his rendition of Stand By Me to even covering artists like Buddy Holly and Little Richard. There may have been a healthy number of fans who were looking for something like this to come out, but the overall character of this album shows a man desperately trying to hold it together.