Before there was the Lost Weekend, there was the Political Year. When John Lennon arrived in New York, home of radical politics, art statements and Yoko Ono, he found himself plunged into an environment very different from the relative calm of life at his Tittinghurst country house, where his home was open house to everyone from the radical Yippies to folkie Phil Ochs.
Defying the authorities, Lennon allied himself with every cause going, from the jailing of White Panther John Sinclair to the Bloody Sunday shootings. And where once his songs had been vague musings about mind games and having no possessions, now he was singing slogan songs even more specific than Paul McCartney’s Give Ireland Back To The Irish.
