10 Rock Collaborations That Made Absolutely No Sense
9. John Lennon/Frank Zappa
After the Beatles' breakup, every single member of the Fab Four used their newfound independence to get delightfully weird. While Ringo's solo outings were being treated as nothing more than a novelty in the years since, it was a trip seeing Paul McCartney reignite the magic with Wings and George Harrison writing odes to the Eastern spiritualism that he had adopted. John Lennon though...he got cues from the CEOs of weird rock and roll.
Being one of the many collaborative efforts that Lennon did with Yoko Ono, Some Time In New York City really felt like he was trying to capture a moment in time, with an album cover and song topics that seem ripped from the headlines like Attica State and New York City. Though the album itself is fine, the ultra weird bits are saved for the second disc, where we are treated to a live gig recording featuring Frank Zappa performing with the Lennons.
This was in prime Zappa territory too, where he was just starting to reach that kind of organized sense of strange that Lennon gravitated towards. While the resulting shows were a bit mixed between both the fans and the Lennons themselves, this is still a nice peek into the creative process and seeing the other side of what made the Smart Beatles' mind tick.