And Some Time in New York City was a logical progression from that event. Lennon had some advantages in getting heard, as an ex-Beatle, not an up-and-coming talent as Dylan had been a decade earlier, and if the subject matter of his new songs puzzled or alienated some fans, he also still had a huge amount of rock & roll street cred, which was only enhanced at the time by his having made Nixon’s enemies list at the time, there were a lot of people to whom that mattered more than his past as a Beatle - at the April 24 antiwar rally in New York in 1971, where he appeared with Yoko Ono and the Elephant’s Memory Band, he showed himself to be among the few musicians who could get a quarter of a million or more people singing and chanting spontaneously, in unison. Seeking his own voice in all of its permutations, and living amid the bracing pace of New York City (which made London, much less Liverpool, look like a cultural and political backwater), Lennon entered a phase similar to Dylan' 1963-1964 period, represented by songs such as “The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” “The Death of Emmett Till,” and “Talking John Birch Society Blues.” Except that where Dylan had toned down that side of his work, never officially releasing his versions of two of those songs (the two most confrontational, in fact), Lennon didn’t hold back, delivering his topical songs with both barrels smoking, expounding on such topical subjects as radical feminism, the Attica prison riot, the treatment of activists John Sinclair and Angela Davis, and the rising strife in Northern Ireland (which was on its way to becoming for the British the same kind of military and political quagmire that Vietnam was for America). 1") and the anthems "Give Peace a Chance" and "Power to the People" saw him trying to embrace outside subjects in his work, and Some Time in New York City carried his writing a step further in this direction, introducing John Lennon, protest singer - true, he was ten years late, in terms of the musical genre (even Joan Baez and Judy Collins were doing pop-style records by then), but it was a logical development given the time in Lennon's life and the strife-filled era with which it coincided. This album was actually a long time in coming, as there had been hints of Lennon moving in this direction for years - he'd long looked upon Bob Dylan with unabashed envy, emulating his sound at moments ("You've Got to Hide Your Love Away") and striving for some of the same mix of edginess and depth, once the group got beyond its original two-guitars-bass-drums and love songs sound "Revolution" (and "Revolution No.
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At the same time, having written, recorded, and released the music on the Plastic Ono Band and Imagine albums - and musically exorcising many of the emotional demons associated with aspects of his past, and working out a musical and publishing "divorce" from Paul McCartney - he was now reveling in the freedom of being an ex-Beatle and exploring music and other subjects that he'd never felt fully free to delve into during the first decade of his career. This was understandable - at the time, Lennon was neck-deep in his struggle to remain in the United States, a conflict rooted in his antiwar and antiestablishment politics and the enmity of the Nixon administration.
The first album co-billed to John Lennon and Yoko Ono to actually contain recognizable pop music, Some Time in New York City found the Lennons in an explicitly political phase.
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