ALBUM REVIEW: John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Wedding Album

    On 20 March 1969, John Lennon married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar, near Spain, and less than a month later he would legally change his name to John Ono Lennon, taking his wife's last name in what was a radical decision for the time. The following period of Vietnam protests and bed-ins and press interviews is one of the more famous episodes in John Lennon's complicated life, and chances are you're already vaguely familiar with this story if you've gotten invested with The Beatles (or heard "The Ballad of John and Yoko". Either/or). To commemorate the lucky couple's special day, this album was compiled (recorded? assembled?) in 1969, complete with elaborate packaging to celebrate. Wedding Album marks the third and final album of John and Yoko's avant-garde trilogy, a year before John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band showed that he could do more on his own than whatever the hell "Cambridge 1996" is. It is easily the least avant-garde and the least interesting out of the trilogy, but in some ways it's actually an improvement over Life With the Lions. A fitting end for a baffling trilogy.

    Split across two songs and two sides, Wedding Album in structure is a return to form of the preceding Two Virgins album, albeit its contents is wholly unique in the series - consider this an a capella release, a welcome mix-up of the formula. "John & Yoko" for example is, I shit you not, 23 minutes of John Lennon saying "Yoko", and then Yoko Ono replying "John" in reply. It's just that. They whisper, then they yell, then whisper again, and then it sounds like they're eating apples or something? I don't know - you've heard one minute of this song and you've heard the entire thing. Is it the worst thing out of the trilogy? Far from it, simply because this doesn't require a dose of Tylenol, but it may be the most tedious. The following 25 minutes of "Amsterdam" on the second half at least has some purpose - it's an interview with the newlyweds at the Amsterdam Hilton hotel, capturing the couple discussing their famous peace protests and movements, and includes the occasional musical interlude (we even get an early version of "John John Let's Hope For Peace" here, and some other intermissions here have some charm to them). Out of the entire trilogy, this is probably the best thing out of the three albums, although it's debatable if that's saying much.

    I've heard triple albums that don't feel as grating and overly long as this series of bizarre avant-garde releases. John and Yoko were deeply in love, and every single release has some sort of story behind it that makes each album a product of its environment (be it falling in love or the turmoil of infant mortality), but it doesn't make them any more of an enjoyable listen. It challenges the listener, sure, but does that warrant automatic praise? Wedding Album is marginally better than Life With the Lions, but it's a real test of patience at points, which is probably the best way to describe these albums. If ever there was material that is the definition of "serious fans only", these are it, and in some ways Wedding Album is the best encapsulation of that.

RATING: ✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯

Listen to Wedding Album.