John Lennon: "Isolation" thoughts
5th track on Plastic Ono Band (1970)
Isolation is a track where the trio of lyrics + emotion + music and the interpretation we can make concerning the actual John Lennon - not just the "narrator" - makes this one of John's most striking bridges and one of my favourite John Lennon songs.
The song starts purely with piano. The moment the vocal arrives (single tracked), together with the drum, are already have power and a great preparation for the bridge, which will build on the same three elements.
The song slowly builds, almost meanders. The fourth time the "Isolation" part arrives, is the moment that signals the change; the vocals are drawned out and the double track makes its appareance.
The bridge is a turn; both lyrically and musically. It's emotionally different; it's in its short moments full of anger yet laced with acceptance (you are just a human). It's a human song, and the human core of the album (and not just bc the word itself used! it's the admission itself.)
Isolation is also the midpoint of the album, it's essentially the center song, and I would call it the emotional center of the album. An idea that probably can be supported by the trio of Mother-Isolation-God, essentially the first, the middle and the last songs. They make up the emotional spine of the album, on which the rest of the songs hangs. All features piano, a slow, almost dragging tempo; they are all devastating in a different way. They also progressively operate with more lyrics and melody. (Although maybe it could be argued that the self being rejected (Mother) - self expresses acceptance (Isolation) - self rejects other things and figures in return (God) disturbs the forward moving flow that the music brings... I think it works just fine and I'm complicating it.)
The lyrics almost has an apocalyptic feel to it; the way it mentions the possible end of the world. ("We're afraid of everyone/Afraid of the sun" "The sun will never disappear/But the world may not have many years").
Our "little boy and girl" trying to change this world. Either because little people are capable of changing the world, or because these two particular one feel imbued with mission (and self-importance). They cling to each other in a lonely word, where people are afraid of everything. Our narrator - and everybody, he says - is full of paranoia, is surrounded by enemies ("Everybody trying to put us down"). But herein lies something the narrator doesn't recognizes - these enemies are very convenient in nurturing this connection between the "little boy and girl". Alias: how John and Yoko cling to each other in the early years in their all obsessed glory; how John Lennon tended to pour all his energy, ideas and feelings into one person - and how it had given the false safety of the two of them clinging to this lonely raft in the turbulent sea of the world; how they were together in their safe house in the little town.
The bridge's lyrics are interesting to me as a kind of interpretation of John Lennon himself. Because it has the typical John Lennon sentiment: You hurt me. I am in pain and it was done by others. They are the ones who are responsible! They should take the blame! But also offers something that John - because he was a sensitive person who, in my reading, was capable of empathy - recognized. He saw, he knew - in abstract ways! - that other people have humanity. That they can be the victims - partly because he can be. (John reminds me so much of Roger Waters and thesis of the Pink Floyd song Echoes: And I am you and what I see is me.)
The song, the whole album is stripped down, but the bridge goes even further, and it stand out because it takes away; no bass guitar, no snares. Just the bass drum (?), thumping away. Ringo only starts playing the snare (i'm just saying things, i don't actually recognize parts of the drum kit by sound) and doing more on the victim of the insane part, helping to bring up the intensity - together with the powerful vocal delivery from John and some piano hammering. The bridge also has double tracked vocals (equally panned to left and right), making the whole thing feel bigger, more monumental and surrounded.
It ends with Ringo doing a little drum fill (when there is no vocal, bc he doesn't intrude on the vocals!), and the song continues with the next verse.
Ringo's subtle playing in the bridge is the true allegory and statement for both the album and Ringo's drumming: less is more. And the more barebone the music is, the more starkly the emotionality of it stands out to me.
