News ‘Mind Games’: The John Lennon song Yoko Ono said was too “ahead of its time”
Across the music landscape, no band is more significant than The Beatles, and perhaps there never will be. One of the main reasons for their incredibly vast and longstanding influence over music lies in the fact that they were a pioneering force within pop and rock. The Fab Four were always ahead of their time, setting trends and altering the world of songwriting indefinitely. This legacy of innovation followed each of the Beatles well into their respective solo careers but was particularly prevalent within the work of John Lennon.
When The Beatles split in 1970, each of the four members pursued wildly different genres and musical themes. With Harrison falling deeper into the rabbit hole of Indian influences, Macca pursuing pop and soft rock with Wings, and Ringo doing his own thing, Lennon entrenched himself within counter-cultural values and political activism. In fact, post-Beatles, Lennon was perhaps more famous for his activism and staunch anti-war stance than his solo music itself.
An unavoidable influence on Lennon’s solo work comes, of course, with Yoko Ono. Forming the Plastic Ono Band together after the split of The Beatles, the pair became an inseparable force for music and protest. Their ‘Bed-Ins’ protests and tracks like ‘Give Peace a Chance’ became defining moments for the couple, representative of the fact that they were firmly entrenched within current affairs and the modern day, however, Lennon never lost that innovative streak he had blazed with The Beatles.
Conflict and personal struggle breeds the greatest artwork, which is perhaps why Lennon’s 1973 effort Mind Games is among his finest solo work. Recorded in the midst of FBI surveillance and a battle to stay in the country, the album is undoubtedly one of the songwriter’s most personal and emotional records. In comparison to his other work, though, Mind Games was considerably less successful, as was the album’s title track.
‘Mind Games’, released as a single on the same date as the album, evolved from being an anti-war track into a fight for self-improvement and growth. Reportedly, Lennon’s original title for the song was ‘Make Peace Not War’, befitting the rest of his anti-Vietnam war records, which formed some of the most popular moments within his solo career. However, the final product came from the book Mind Games: The Guide to Inner Space, which is about how you can trick your mind into improving yourself as a person.
Peaking at number 26 in the UK charts, the track was something of a disappointment for Lennon. According to Yoko, its relative failure came from its innovative nature, “I think that people didn’t quite get the message because this was again before its time,” she told Uncut in 1998. “Now, people would understand it. I don’t think in those days people knew that they were playing mind games anyway.”
While ‘Mind Games’ was indeed an innovative track within the context of Lennon’s solo career, Ono seems to forget that 1973 also saw the release of works like David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, forever changing the world of rock and perfectly encapsulating the future of music, in stark contrast to Lennon’s efforts.
