It was bound to be difficult for John Lennon to find any kind of group after The Beatles.
Any of the Fab Four were bound to be judged for bringing in another group behind them when they started out, but before Lennon had a proper solo album under his belt, people were already ridiculing his artistic ventures because of his ties to Yoko Ono. But so what if he was making music with his wife? He was still a fine singer and guitar player, but getting a band together was going to be more than a little bit tricky.
You see, Lennon was never the most accomplished musician in the world. Despite being one of the greatest songwriters to ever walk the Earth, Lennon never considered himself great at piano or guitar, and while he was more than happy to experiment on whatever he was working on, it wasn’t like he was going to be giving Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton a run for their money in the lead department.
If anything, that’s what set Lennon off of working with other people for a while. He had a firm foundation of session musicians helping him bring Imagine and Plastic Ono Band to life, but outside of the people that he trusted, Lennon always felt it would have been silly of him to go into a session with the members of Cream and try to hold his own when they started jamming with each other.
But the Plastic Ono Band at least gave him a decent place to start. Every member could change at any moment, and while Lennon clearly had Ono as a core part of everything, he was going to make sure the focus was on the music rather than the individual people onstage. That’s all well and good, but Lennon did need a little bit of a reminder of what made live music so thrilling when he hooked up with Delaney and Bonnie.
While the group was far from the most experimental band in the world, hearing all of those musicians playing off each other was bound to be a trip whenever they came through town. And since some friends and former Beatles had managed to get on well with every member of the band, Lennon felt elated the moment that he got back onstage and was able to be free to let loose.
Although he was retreating further into his own mind at the start of the 1970s, he still never tired of the rush he felt playing with the group, saying, “When we performed with George and Eric and Bonnie and Delaney and everybody at Lyceum, I don’t care what the pop press said, it was a funky show. And if the audience had, some of them were, right in with us, we were sky high, it was an amazin’ high. A 17-piece band. It’s great with four musicians groovin’, but when you got 17 it’s somethin’ else. And when you got the audience as well. The day we go on the audience is the rhythm section then we’re really groovin’ – that’s what I want.”
At this point, though, it’s not out of the question to consider Delaney and Bonnie as the band-equivalent of a ‘Fifth Beatle’. Lennon had a blast working with them, they convinced George Harrison to pick up a slide when playing lead, and they even managed to give him the inspiration for playing tunes like ‘My Sweet Lord’ and provide him with members of Derek and the Dominoes for the All Things Must Pass sessions.
So while Lennon was clearly more comfortable living the quiet life at home and playing to his heart’s content with Yoko by his side, there was bound to be a bit more magic in hearing all those instruments playing off each other. It wasn’t as intimate as he may have liked, but the point was to give people the kind of show that even Lennon seemed to forget sounded so special.
