In the United States, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band peaked at number 182 on the Billboard album chart. The album was poorly received upon release, with the exception of supportive reviews by Billboard and Lester Bangs of Rolling Stone. Despite its lack of commercial success, it has been influential on a variety of subsequent musicians.
Recording
With the exception of "AOS", Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band was recorded at Abbey Road Studios during the same September–October 1970 sessions that produced the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album.[4][5] Also recorded at this time was "Between the Takes", which was released on the 1998 CD reissue of Ono's 1971 album Fly.[4] "Greenfield Morning I Pushed an Empty Baby Carriage All Over the City" was based on a sample from a tape of George Harrison playing sitar and drums by Ringo Starr treated with tape echo,[6] with lyrics referencing a miscarriage that were derived from Ono's 1964 book Grapefruit.[7] Ono's vocalisations on tracks such as "Why" and "Why Not" mixed hetai, a Japanese vocal technique from kabuki theatre, with rock vocal styles and a raw aggression influenced by the then-popular primal therapy that Lennon and Ono had been undertaking at the time. According to Ono, the recording engineers were in the habit of turning off the recording equipment when she began to perform; at the end of "Why", Lennon can thus be heard asking "Were you gettin' that?"[6]
On 29 February 1968, Ono appeared onstage at London's Royal Albert Hall with avant-garde jazz musician Ornette Coleman and his quartet, then consisting of drummer Ed Blackwell and bassists Charlie Haden and David Izenzon. The performance and their afternoon rehearsal were both recorded; "AOS" was recorded during the rehearsal and included on the album, the only track not featuring the Plastic Ono Band. Describing how she met Coleman, Ono has stated:
Ornette was already very, very established and famous and respected guy as a musician. And I met him in Paris. The way I met was, I was doing a show and after the show, somebody said, Oh, Ornette Coleman is here and he would like to – okay. Well, hello. Thank you for coming. That kind of thing. And he was saying, Well, okay. So he said that he was going to go and do a concert in Albert Hall and would I come and do it with him because he thought it was kind of interesting what I do.[8]
Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band was released through Apple Records to considerable critical disdain on 11 December 1970, at a time when Ono was widely blamed for the recent break-up of The Beatles. It peaked at number 182 during a three-week run on the Billboard album chart in the United States, and failed to chart in the United Kingdom.[5] Among the few favorable contemporary reviews were those of Billboard, which called it "visionary," and Rolling Stone critic Lester Bangs, who called it "the first J&Y album that doesn’t insult the intelligence—in fact, in its dark confounding way, it’s nearly as beautiful as John’s album… There’s something happening here."[10]
In a 2017 Bandcamp Daily feature focused on Ono's impact, British electronic musician Kiran Leonard applauded Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, writing: "the strength and range of vocal techniques on [the album] is simply astonishing...to do what Ono does with her voice on [the album] is no easy task."[15]
Release
The covers of Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band are nearly identical. Lennon pointed out the difference in their 1980 Playboy interview: "in Yoko's, she's leaning back on me; in mine, I'm leaning on her". The photos were taken with an Instamatic camera on the grounds of their Tittenhurst Park estate in Berkshire by actor Daniel Richter, who lived with them and worked as their assistant at the time.
The album was reissued on compact disc by Rykodisc in 1997, with three bonus tracks from the era.[16] An "LP replica" special edition was issued by V2 Records in Japan in 2007,[17] and the album was reissued again on LP, compact disc, and digital download by Secretly Canadian in 2016, with bonus tracks and rare photos.
An alternate version of "Open Your Box", the B-side to the UK issue of Lennon's 1971 single "Power to the People", appears on the 1997 and 2016 reissues.
Tracks 1–6 per the 1970 release, with the following bonus tracks:
"Open Your Box" (alternate version) – 7:35
"Something More Abstract" – 0:44
"Why" (extended version) – 8:41
"The South Wind" – 16:38
Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band – The Live Sessions (2020)[edit]
The 2020 deluxe box set of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band included a Blu-ray disc containing the unedited live sessions for Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band as well as three previously unreleased songs and three B-sides that appeared on John Lennon singles in 1969 and 1970.[18] "Life" is the full version of the track "Between the Takes", which appeared as a bonus track on CD reissues of Fly.
"Why" (Live Session) – 18:00
"Why Not" (Live Session) – 21:22
"Greenfield Morning I Pushed an Empty Baby Carriage All Over the City" (Live Session) – 8:22
^John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (Media notes). John Lennon. Universal Music Group. 2020. 0602507354299.((cite AV media notes)): CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
