Another Wednesday is upon us, and I’d like to welcome you the latest installment of my weekly feature, which takes a closer look at a song I’ve only mentioned in passing or not covered at all to date. My pick today is Jealous Guy, one of my all-time favorites by John Lennon.
If you’ve followed my blog for some time or know my music taste otherwise, you’re probably a bit in disbelief that after seven and a half years into my blogging adventure, I’m telling you I haven’t written about this gem. You’re not entirely wrong. I’ve included Jealous Guy in a couple of previous posts about Lennon, but I haven’t done a deep dive on it until now. It’s about time!
Jealous Guy first appeared in September 1971 on Lennon’s sophomore solo album Imagine. Incredibly, the song wasn’t released as a single at the time. Eventually, this happened postmortem in November 1985 in the UK and October 1988 in the U.S.
Lennon began work on the song in 1968. At that time, it was called Child of Nature and was one of many songs The Beatles demoed for their self-titled double LP, aka The White Album. Originally, the lyrics were inspired by a lecture Maharishi Mahesh Yogi gave in early 1968 while The Beatles were in India to attend his spiritual retreat in Rishikesh. That version was part of the so-called Esher demos that were released in November 2018 on The Beatles: 50th Anniversary Edition, which I covered here at the time.
According to The Beatles Bible, Lennon made another attempt to present the song to his bandmates. It happened in January 1969 during the Get Back/Let It Be sessions. Quoting from the Bible: Similarly, Lennon revived ‘Child Of Nature’ – here known as ‘On The Road To Marrakesh’ – although it was clear that the song wasn’t working for The Beatles. Wikipedia adds there’s no evidence Lennon ever visited the Moroccan city. I found this clip on YouTube, which seems to capture the aforementioned moment.
This finally brings me to Jealous Guy, the song that ended up on the Imagine album. Lennon recorded it in May 1971 at Ascot Sound Studios, a recording studio he and Yoko Ono had built in 1970 on the grounds of their home Tittenhurst Park, a Georgian country house in the English county of Berkshire. String overdubs were subsequently added at the Record Plant in New York City.
Lennon (vocals, acoustic guitar, whistling) had a little help from some friends: In addition to Mike Pinder (tambourine) of The Moody Blues and Badfinger’s Joey Molland and Tom Evans (acoustic guitar each), the recording featured Nicky Hopkins (piano), John Barham (harmonium), soon-to-be Yes drummer Alan White (vibraphone), Klaus Voormann (bass) and Jim Keltner (drums).
I would be amiss not to mention the first version of Jealous Guy I ever heard on the radio back in Germany in the wake of Lennon’s murder in December 1980: the beautiful rendition by Roxy Music they initially added to their touring setlist as a tribute to him and subsequently recorded and released as a single in February 1981.
Following are some additional insights from Songfacts:
John Lennon confronts the green-eyed monster in this song, where he sings about the fits of jealousy that controlled him. At the time, he was married to Yoko Ono, who believes the jealousy Lennon describes is not sexual, but more an unfounded feeling of inadequacy. “He was jealous about the fact that I had another language in my head, you know, Japanese, that he can’t share with me,” she told Uncut in 1998. “It was almost on a very conceptual, spiritual level. It wasn’t on a level of physical or anything ’cause I just would never give him a reason for that.
Doing press after this song was released, John Lennon explained: “When you’re in love with somebody, you tend to be jealous, and want to own them and possess them 100 percent, which I do. Intellectually, I thought owning a person is rubbish, but I love Yoko, I want to possess her completely. I don’t want to stifle her. You have so little as a child, I think once you find it, you want to hang onto it. You grab it so much, you tend to kill it.”
Paul McCartney stated in the February 1985 issue of Playgirl: “He (John) used to say, ‘Everyone is on the McCartney bandwagon.’ He wrote ‘I’m Just a Jealous Guy,’ and he said that the song was about me. So I think it was just some kind of jealousy.”
Speaking with Rolling Stone months after Lennon’s death, Yoko said that he made her write out a list of all the men she slept with before they met. “He wrote a song, ‘Jealous Guy,’ that should have told people how jealous he was,” she said. “After we started living together, it was John who wanted me there all the time. He made me go into the men’s room with him. He was scared that if I stayed out in the studio with a lot of other men, I might run off with one of them.”
Keltner shared his thoughts in the 2019 Above Us Only Sky documentary: “‘Jealous Guy’ was a beautiful piece of music, so typical of John Lennon: intuitive, like nothing to worry about. And Klaus, the way he hugged the beat. It was a gentle thing, but we weren’t being precious with it. It just was accommodating the lyric.”
Voorman added: “It was very personal. That was the moment when I got so much into what he was saying and what he was playing that I didn’t know what I was playing – it was like a trance. I didn’t know what key I was in – it just floated automatically.
Joey Molland recalled working with Lennon in an interview with Gibson.com, “It was great! He was just a plain-talking, regular guy. No b.s. at all. Now, of course, he was John Lennon, so he had that energy about him; he kind of lit up the room, you know? But he welcomed us, said he was thrilled to have us, and then he said, ‘The first song we’re going to do is something called ‘Jealous Guy.” It was pretty amazing, sitting there with your headphones on, hearing John Lennon singing this fantastic song. Totally remarkable.”
Yoko Ono contributed to the track’s lyrics. However, because of the public’s negative attitude towards her at the time, her role was downplayed. She told NME: “Well, if it was just John, [he] would have given me the right credit, but it was a difficult time. No famous songwriter would have thought of splitting the credit with his wife.”
Yoko added regarding her influence on the track: “I think it’s a good song from a women’s point of view as well. John was trying to create a fun song about going on a trip to Rishikesh. That might have been great too, but it ended up not being that.”
Sources: Wikipedia; The Beatles Bible; YouTube