This is Lennon at his best. And what is Yoko knitting? http://www.thisdayinmusic.com/pages/instant_karma

 

On this day 26th Jan in 1970, John Lennon wrote, recorded, and mixed his new single, "Instant Karma," all in one day. It ranks as one of the fastest-released songs in pop music history, recorded at London's Abbey Road Studios and arriving in stores only ten days later. The single peaked at No. 3 on the US chart and No. 5 in the UK.

It was a good single, a good start to his solo career. Technically speaking, released before the Beatles officially broke up, in April 1970. I wonder if John contemplated crediting the song to "Lennon and McCartney" :o

 

Doubt it, somehow!

 

His first two solo albums, the Plastic Ono band album and Imagine, were good too, and achieved good commercial success. After that he went off the boil a bit, until a return to some kind of form with Double Fantasy.

 

He never achieved anywhere near the commercial success as a solo artist as he had with The Beatles, his first UK number one single sadly came after his passing, and he only had the one US number one single post fab four - Whatever Gets You Through The Night - while he was alive.

 

I have a theory that, commercially speaking, Lennon lost a bit of selling power when he came under the influence of Bob Dylan's music in the mid sixties. Look at all the big selling songs John wrote in the Beatles eary career - Help, A Hard Day's Night, I Feel Fine, Ticket To Ride, Please Please Me - all of these big selling singles were either mostly written by John or mainly written by John with a bit of help from Paul.

 

Even some of the early Beatles album tracks which were written by John had that great sing-along commercial appeal, such as I Should Have Known Better, If I Fell, There's A Place, It's Only Love, No Reply Some of these tracks would have topped the charts had they been released as full blown singles.

 

But it seems to me that once he came under the influence of Mr. Zimmerman and others of his genre he lost a bit of commercial bite with his writing. His work on the Revolver album, for example, is a case in point. Tomorrow Never Knows is a great work, but never likely to make the album sell as Paul's songs on the album, such as Got To Get You Into My Life or Here There And Everywhere. And the same thing certainly applies to his late sixties work, and a good deal of his solo stuff. His music from 1966 was more complex, but less commercially appealing, in my view, with the odd exception, such as All You Need Is Love and Imagine.

 

John was a great artist, shame that his life was cut short in such a tragic and cruel way. Loved his music a lot, whether ultra commercial or just highly creative.

 

 

Originally, Let It Be was going to be released under the name Plastic Ono Band, however Lennon decided to release instant karma instead. Instant Karma was no.6 in the charts the week Let It Be entered at no.2 - held off no.1 by Lee Marvin Wanderin Star of all things!

Edited January 26, 201213 yr by fiesta

That`s is a great song and he was a musical genius to be fair.