cr01's Full Review: Season of Glass [Remaster] by Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono. Now there’s a name! Yoko Ono is perhaps one of the most reviled and ridiculed artists in rock history, and yet again proves just what a thankless task it is for those who are there first! Despite her current languish in rock obscurity, Yoko was perhaps only one of a handful of true originators in rock.
Music history according to cr01
Think back to those heady late 60’s days, women in “Pop and Rock” were like women in business at that time – rare, underappreciated, and stuck in strictly limited niches. By 1968, any women in popular music could almost be simply categorised as one of the following:
Motown and soul chick
Pseudo Rock and Roll singer turned “all round family entertainer” chick
Folk chick, and
Gutsy tragic blues singer chick…
and that was about it… and how many of these females sang their own compositions?
1968 and all that…lets talk art!!
All of a sudden John met Yoko and dragged her kicking and screaming into the nearest recording studio. Almost from the off, her own unique style and perception of Pop Art created an uncompromising and experimental sound.
Lennon fans were treated to a Yoko composition on the b-side of every solo Lennon single. One of her early classics was the weird and wonderful “Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s only looking for a hand in the snow)”, another, the off the wall folksy “Remember Love”.
Today we take the diversity of women in rock for granted… however Yoko broke the mould for so many performers who were to come along after Yoko… including Patti Smith, Bjork, Kate Bush, The Slits and Siouxie Sioux.
Of course, Yoko was from the same school of art as Andy Warhol, both were fascinated by fame, and both also exploited the cult of the personality as an art form.
Perhaps this unashamed pursuit of fame won her few fans as she consistently challenged both the public and private perceptions of “John and Yoko” over those early years. Of course Yoko was also fairly inconsistent in her recordings; she never produced a great album, only the wonderfully odd and weird track from time to time. Artist first, wife and mother second, and singer third, her recording career is admittedly erratic and unsatisfying.
There are also many who blame Yoko for the demise of the Beatles. Maybe so, but re-edit history and have the Beatles stay together throughout the 70’s - listen to both Lennon and McCartney’s post Beatles recordings and tell me that they could have maintained those 60’s standards? Show me a Rolling Stones fan who doesn’t secretly wish that Marianne Faithful didn’t do the same for Mick and the boys at around the same time?
Season Of Glass – can’t I just play the album sleeve
By Season of Glass released in 1981, Yoko had steered her musical style to a more mainstream and traditional rock theme, from those wild ground breaking early days. However, ever the artist, fascinated by fame and personality, the album cover of Season of Glass is perhaps one of the most famous and controversial album covers ever produced.
A photograph taken by Yoko, shows Lennon’s unwashed and blood stained spectacles placed on a table in the apartment that they used to share. Next to the table, is a half filled glass of water, and the New York sky line appears fuzzily and out of focus through a window behind the main images.
The back of the original sleeve shows Yoko sat by the table alone in the darkened room, the New York sky scrapers almost semi detached from the inner moment of the room.
In the UK, this cover caused a storm of protest as the media believed that Yoko was using the recent violent memory of John’s death to shift a few units. It is true, that this album is perhaps the only one of Yoko’s that ever graced the charts, albeit briefly, but the photograph as art is perfectly clear with its message of lonely isolation, and the semi detached existence of the city they both once enjoyed.
OK, put on those ear protectors, I’m turning it on!!
Well yes, for someone who admires Yoko as much as I do, the sound of Season of Glass is somewhat a disappointment, although it is not without some merit.
Yoko never had a strong or conventional voice, and by the time of the recording of Season Of Glass she was almost fifty years old. To try to meld her voice into a traditional rock style was always going to be one that offered her few favours, the shock of a Yoko scream while the backing guitars rocked, were always a better bet! Yoko’s shrill and thin voice also struggles to maintain the listener’s interest for the whole of an album.
Perhaps we have lost something with CD’s where all the tracks run one after the other, without the listener having to get up and flip the vinyl over.
Firstly the advent of CD’s can be directly linked to the start of the growth in the numbers of the obese in the western world, and we also now miss albums like Season of Glass which has that old fashioned quality where the two sides of the album have an entirely different feel. The tracks on side one are gentle, floating affairs which largely deal with Yoko’s sadness and loss, and memories. Those on side two are erratic beasts full of anger and pain.
There is an almost new wave Blondie sound to some of the tracks. Dogtown for example, has that jaunty beat of Blondie’s One Way Or Another, and Yoko’s Debbie Harry style delivery makes it stand out from the rest of the early tracks. Shame about those lyrics:
Peas porridge loved
Peas porridge spoiled
Peas porridge in the pot nine years old
Some gets laid
Some gets slayed
Some stays in the pot nine years old
The first track on the album Goodbye Sadness with its slightly late night jazziness is fairly typical of those early tracks. Yoko gently speaks/sings, and of course fails to hold a note even a moment. The lyrics give some hint to the pain she has experienced:
Goodbye goodbye sadness
I don’t need you any more
Goodbye goodbye sadness
I cant take it anymore
Mindweaver opens with a pseudo phone call to Lennon, and is as blunt a love poem to Lennon as anything she ever produced on their joint albums:
He was a mindbender
Always on the phone
Telling me all sorts of
Dreams he has sewn
Although his voice was sweet to me
I wondered if we could ever be
Nobody Sees you Like You Do is an almost gentle country rock ballad, with Yoko’s distinctive accent and shrill voice coming to the fore. However as Yoko herself says in the sleeve notes: “when I started to sing, I noticed my throat was all choked up and my voice was cracking…well wasn’t that what the critics had been saying about me for all these years anyway? That gave me a laugh”.
Silver Horse is almost a return to that old folk whimsy, a very gentle song with some quite beautiful lyrics (all about how although John wasn’t quite the fantastic man that she first thought, she still didn’t regret being with him)
The original side two opens with I Don’t Know Why with a slightly rockier feel, and Yoko stretches her vocal chords with her distinctive warble coming into the fore, and a high pitched chorus, with a shouted “You bastard, we had everything” to close. This track sets the scene for the erratic emotional rollercoaster that is the second half of this recording.
Extension 33 is perhaps the only track on the album which doesn’t directly relate to John, a strange tale of having three blind kids to bring up! Vocally, Yoko moves into Cyndi Lauper territory with this and the following track which is opened by the sounds of three gun shots and a scream , No, No, No, a deeply disturbed track with insistent jarring backing beat, and angry vocals.
She Gets Down on her Knees is another bouncy new wave feel track, with a Japanese style influence, and with an interesting hookline:
“She gets down on her knees to throw up life” Well, haven’t you ever had a day like that?
Another almost Japanese style song follows, a gentle ballad, Toyboat, and a very Saxy jazzy reworking of the Lords prayer Mother of the Universe ends the show.
Conclusions
In so many ways this is a disappointing album, with many tracks being too uniform and bland. However as a piece of personal therapy, then Yoko puts laid to some ghosts and emotions, and as a piece of rock history it could be described as being priceless.
Season Of Glass 1981 – Track Listing
Goodbye Sadness
Mindweaver
Even When You’re Far Away
Nobody Sees Me Like You Do
Turn on the Wheel
Dogtown
Silver Horse
I don’t know why
Extension 33
Will You Touch Me?
She gets down on her knees
Toyboat
Mother of the Universe
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