Notes

---

"It started in '73 with Phil and fell apart. I ended up as part of mad, drunk scenes in Los Angeles and I finally finished it off on me own. I can't begin to say, it's just barmy , there's a jinx on that album." -John Lennon

On September 26, 1969, Apple Records issued Abbey Road, the last and most popular album the Beatles recorded. The LP opens with Come Together, a Lennon-McCartney composition that was actually written entirely by John. The first line, "Here come old flat top, he come grooving up slowly" is suspiciously close to, "Here come old flat top, he was grooving up with me," a lyric from the 1956 Chuck Berry single, You Can 't Catch Me. John admitted being influenced by Berry while writing Come Together but denied plagiarizing his work. Nevertheless, Morris Levy, president of Roulette Records and the head of Big Seven Music Corporation (publishers of You Can't Catch Me), filed suit against John for copyright infringement. As with most legal action, the case took years to come to trial and months to settle.


YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the fall of 1973, John moved into a Santa Monica beach house and talked to producer Phil Spector about working on an album of rock n' roll "oldies." The idea dated back to the days of Let It Be when the Beatles toyed with the notion of doing a similar project.
John spent three weeks trying to convince Spector he would be given complete control of the album. He promised not to come into the booth between takes and co-produce as he'd done on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Imagine and Sometime In New York City.
John was not lacking for material. His just-completed Mind Games had yet to be released. John just wanted to have some fun in the studio singing some of the rock n' roll songs he had performed as a teenager. He did not want to be bothered with arranging the tunes, hiring the musicians or mixing the tapes.
Work on the album finally commenced in mid-October 1973. John sang and played rhythm guitar while Phil dictated orders from the control room. The sessions took place in Los Angeles at A&M Studios and Record Plant West. They quickly gained legendary status among the city's top session men as Phil was using up to twenty-eight musicians on a single track, all playing "live" (and often out-of-tune). Although not credited on the album, those participating in the sessions included Hal Blaine, Larry Carlton, David Cohen, Steve Cropper, Jesse Ed Davis, Jose Feliciano, Jim Gordon, Nicky Hopkins, Jim Horn, Jim Keltner, Bobby Keys, Barry Mann, Harry Nilsson, Dan Phillips, Mac Rebennack (alias Dr. John), Leon Russell, David Scott, Phil Spector, Nine Tempo, Klaus Voorman and Charlie Watts.
Shortly after the sessions began, the copyright infringement suit between Morris Levy and John came to an end. Levy was victorious although John still maintained he had not plagiarized anything.
According to the first part of the settlement, John agreed to record three Big Seven Music songs on his next LP. The Big Seven catalog consists primarily of rock and pop tunes from the late fifties and early sixties. Since John was already working on an "oldies" collection, it would be easy to include several Big Seven numbers without it being obvious that he was bound to record them.
Back in Los Angeles, rumors were running rampant in the music trade about the wild goings-on at the Spector sessions. According to drummer Jim Keltner, Phil had fired a gun inside Record Plant West although studio representatives denied it. Rolling Stone reported that Spector had drawn two guns on Stevie Wonder, a guest one evening, in protest of Wonder supposedly hiring away an engineer Spector wanted to use. John later told BBC Radio's Andy Peebles that he once heard a loud noise, possibly gunfire, coming from the men's room of the Record Plant. Harry Nilsson also recounted how Spector had John tied to a chair during one session and then left him in the studio at the end of the night. Fortunately, John managed to free himself and called a friend to come get him out of the building. According to Anthony Fawcett, John's personal assistant, much of this lunatic behavior was caused by those in the studio consuming considerable amounts of brandy while they worked.
By late December 1973, Spector had eight tracks "in the can," including three that satisfied John's settlement with Morris Levy.
Below is the list of songs along with the performers who made them famous:

Bony Moronie (Larry Williams)
Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry)
My Baby Left Me (Arthur Cruddup/Elvis Presley)
Just Because (Lloyd Price/Larry Williams)
Be My Baby (The Ronettes)
Angel Baby (Rosie and the Originals; John's all-time favorite single and a Big Seven song)
You Can't Catch Me (the Chuck Berry hit that caused the lawsuit)
Ya Ya (Lee Dorsey; not actually a Big Seven title but it was co-written by Levy)

After these eight tracks were completed, Spector quit coming to the sessions. A few days later, Spector disappeared altogether and, as John soon learned, he had taken the master tapes with him. There was the loss of the Spector tapes. John needed them to fulfill his agreement with Morris Levy. He had never left an album unfinished before and had certainly never had anyone walk off with his work.
In August 1974 has John regained possession of the Phil Spector material. Rather than using studio time to sort through the ten boxes of tape, John decided to go ahead and record his new album and put the Spector tracks aside for the time being. To get the tapes back, John had to have Capitol Records sue Phil, yet in the final settlement, it was Capitol president Al Coury who paid Spector $90,000 in cash for their return.
On September 26 John released Walls And Bridges. Unfortunately, the release of Walls And Bridges before the "oldies" album posed a serious problem. All the songs were John Lennon originals. John's settlement with Levy called for three complete Big Seven Music songs to appear on his "next" album. Levy phoned Lennon's attorney, Harold Seider, and insisted on talking to John face-to-face. On October 8 the three met for lunch at New York's Club Cavaliero on 58th Street. John explained what had happened to the Spector tapes and that he had indeed recorded three Big Seven songs for what he thought would be his "next" LP.
At the end of the Walls And Bridges sessions, John listened to the eight Spector tracks but found that only four were suitable for release. He debated what to do with them. He thought of issuing the four cuts on an EP but American record companies were not pressing EPs in 1974. He also considered putting them out as successive singles but did not feel the individual tracks were strong enough for that. Finally, he decided to go back to the Record Plant and re-record enough material to make a full album using many of the same musicians who played on Walls And Bridges.
During lunch, John also told Levy he was considering marketing his "oldies" album through television. John figured the public might have lost interest in the nostalgia craze that swept the entertainment industry following the 1973 release of George Lucas' blockbuster motion picture, "American Graffiti", Putting out an "oldies" collection seemed like a good idea in 1973, but after a year of problems it now sounded stale. The hard-core rock community's expectations of what John and Phil would produce together had now eclipsed anything John could hope to salvage from the already finished tracks.

Eventually, John typed a list of the songs he intended to put on tape:

Be-Bop-A-Lula (Gene Vincent)
Peggy Sue (Buddy Holly)
That'll Be The Day (Buddy Holly)
Breathless (Jerry Lee Lewis)
Slipping And A Sliding (sic) (Little Richard and Buddy Holly)
Come On Everybody (Eddie Cochran)
Rip It Up (Little Richard)
Reddy Teddy (sic) (Little Richard)
Do You Wanna Dance (sic) (Bobby Freeman)
Bring It On Home To Me (Sam Cooke and Carla Thomas)
Send Me Some Loving (sic) (Little Richard, Buddy Holly and Sam Cooke)
Stand By Me (Ben E. King) Also included, but crossed out, were:
(30) 40 Days (Chuck Berry and Ronnie Hawkins)
Ain't That A Shame (Fats Domino)
Summertime Blues (Eddie Cochran)

Between October 21 and October 25, John and his crew of seven studio musicians recorded nine new tracks at Record Plant East:

Be-Bop-A -Lula
Stand By Me
Ready Teddy/Rip It Up
Ain't That A Shame
Do You Want To Dance
Slippin' And Slidin'
Peggy Sue
Bring It On Home To Me/Send Me Some Lovin'
Ya Ya

John re-recorded Ya Ya, the Morris Levy number, despite having a finished version "in the can" from the Spector sessions. He probably wanted to make sure he had a clean take for release since he had angered Levy by using a one-minute practice tape of the tune on Walls And Bridges.
It's possible that John also re-recorded Bony Moroney. Tom Panunzio, an assistant engineer at Record Plant East who started working there only a few weeks before John's "oldies" sessions began, said he "stretched a finished tape" of the song one evening, thereby destroying it. Since the commercially released version came from the Spector sessions, the tape Panunzio ruined must have been a second recording of the number made in New York.
The last track to be completed was Just Because, a Lloyd Price song that Phil had suggested John record. Phil produced the basic track in Los Angeles but John redubbed his lead vocals in New York. As the track fades out, you can hear John saying: "This is Doctor Winston O'Boogie saying goodnight from Record Plant East, New York. We hope you had a swell time. Everybody here says 'hi', good-bye." Several years later, John wondered whether saying "good-bye" at the end of the number was his unconscious farewell to the recording industry, since that word turned out to be the last thing he put on tape for five years.

In mid-November 1974, Morris Levy persuaded John to send him a rough mix of the "oldies" album. Since Levy controlled three of the songs and since John's recordings of those three titles served as the final settlement between them, John gave Levy a 7-1/2-ips stereo dub of the fifteen tracks.

As time passed, John began to have his doubts about the "oldies" album. The initial tracks that Spector produced sounded lethargic and overblown and the nine additional cuts he had recorded in New York had been churned out at the rate of two-a-day with little time spent on arranging or overdubbing. The idea of an "oldies" album seemed good in 1973, but now it would be at least spring of 1975 before the record could be in the stores. John thought about shelving the whole project but he had never left an entire LP "in the can" before and had no desire to start now.

When Capitol learned that Levy might indeed get John's tapes, tapes that they had spent $90,000 to recover, they were furious. After all, neither Capitol Records nor John Lennon had given Levy the right to market John's recordings, his name nor his likeness. Several weeks later, Seider, acting on behalf of Capitol and John, told Levy he would not be able to issue any John Lennon records.

With everything else in John's life improving, his problems with Morris Levy were far from over. In early February 1975, Levy took the rough tape John had given him and pressed it into an album, John Lennon Sings The Great Rock & Roll Hits/Roots (US: Adam VIII A8018). The jacket and record labels said, "Produced from master recordings owned by and with permission of John Lennon and Apple Records, Inc.," even though the LP had been transferred from a 7-1/2-ips dub. Naturally, the sound quality was inferior.
The album's front cover featured a cheaply reproduced cut-out photo of John taken by Ethan Russell during the Let It Be sessions. It bore little resemblance to the way John looked in 1975. The back cover had the list of song titles plus illustrations of two other Adam VIII TV compilations.

Levy left himself vulnerable to a lawsuit from Venice Music, Incorporated for failing to credit two of its songs on the album. On side one, Rip it Up is actually a medley of Ready Teddy and Rip It Up. Here there is no real problem since both numbers were written by Robert Blackwell and John Marascalco and published by Venice Music. On side two, Bring It On Home To Me turns out to be a combination of that song and Send Me Some Lovin'. Levy made no mention on the cover or label of the latter tune, its writers (Lloyd Price and John Marascalco) or Venice Music.
When Capitol Records learned that Levy was getting ready to release Roots, it rush-released an authorized version of John's "oldies" album, Rock 'N' Roll (US: Apple Records SK-3419). Besides being pressed from the original master tapes, Rock 'N' Roll also featured cover art selected and approved by John. The front of the jacket bears a striking black-and-white photo of a young John Lennon leaning against a doorway in downtown Hamburg. This shot was taken by Jurgen Vollmer, one of the Beatles' few close German friends, during their second trip to Hamburg in the spring of 1961.
John also re-sequenced the songs and eliminated two of the rougher tracks, Angel Baby and Be My Baby, both from the Spector sessions.
Angel Baby was a Big Seven Music song and was one of three numbers John recorded as a settlement to Morris Levy's copyright infringement suit. By omitting it, John was openly disregarding the terms he'd agreed to and was leaving himself wide-open for further legal action.
Below is the running order of Rock 'N' Roll:

(Side One) Be-Bop-A-Lula/Stand By Me/Medley:Rip It Up-Ready Teddy/You Can't Catch Me/
Ain't That A Shame/Do You Want To Dance/Sweet Little Sixteen/

(Side Two) Slippin' And Slidin' /Peggy Sue/Medley: Bring it On Home To Me-Send Me Some Lovin'/Bony Moronie/Ya Ya/Just Because.

On February 7, Capitol Records shipped out the first copies of Rock 'N' Roll. The album featured thirteen tracks and carried a list price of $5.98. On February 8, Adam VIII television ads for Roots appeared on many independent stations in the eastern United States. Roots had fifteen cuts and was selling for $4.98.
Capitol immediately informed TV and radio stations that Roots was not an "official" John Lennon album and that anyone who continued to advertise and sell it would be liable for criminal prosecution. Capitol was able to force Adam VIII to stop production on Roots but not until after 3,000 copies had been pressed. John later said he had ordered several copies for himself and waited over three weeks for the records to arrive.
Capitol's initial pressing of Rock 'N' Roll was 2,444 LPs and 500 eight-track tapes, but after its first month in the stores only 1,270 LPs and 175 eight-track tapes had actually been purchased. In 1985, ten years after its release, Rock 'N' Roll ranked as the second-worst-selling music album by John Lennon, just ahead of Sometime In New York City, John and Yoko's strongly political LP, which by then had sold less than 175,000 copies in the United States. Once Capitol removed all copies of the Adam VIII album from the market, Morris Levy sued John for breach of an oral agreement and asked for $42 million in damages. Surprisingly, Levy made no mention of John's failure to comply with their original settlement.
John promptly filed a countersuit against Levy for his unauthorized use of John's recordings, his name and his likeness. John also asked for damages, claiming his reputation as a recording artist had been harmed due to the "shoddiness" of the Roots packaging.

In January 1976, the Morris Levy suit finally came to trial in U.S. District Court in Manhattan with Judge Thomas Griesa presiding. John had excellent legal counsel and was prepared to fight to the end. Ultimately, John may owe thanks to Levy's attorney, William Schurtman, for the direction the case took.
John contended that the tape Levy had used to manufacture Roots was only a 7-1/2-ips dub (and a rough mix at that) and therefore, the resulting records could only be of substandard quality. Schurtman attempted to disprove this by showing that if both Roots and Rock 'N' Roll were played on an ordinary record player, no one could hear any difference between the two. To demonstrate this, he brought his daughter's portable stereo into the courtroom along with copies of both LPs. He first put on Roots and played the opening cut, Be-Bop-A-Lula, but he had neglected to check the speed of the turntable and the record played back at 45rpm. After a quick adjustment, he tried to play Be-Bop-A-Lula again, but something else went wrong. Finally, Judge Griesa volunteered to take the two LPs to the nearby apartment of his law clerk and compare them at a later time.
John also argued that the cover photo on Roots, an early 1969 shot of him in shoulder-length hair, could damage his credibility as a recording artist because it neither reflected how he looked when the record was made nor was it a conceptual design, as on Rock 'N' Roll, created to evoke the spirit of the material on the album. Prior to the trial, John had gotten his hair cut quite short and now looked nothing like the photo in question. Schurtman put John on the stand and tried to intimidate him by maintaining that he had had his hair cut just for the trial.
"Rubbish," John replied. "I cut it every 18 months."
Everyone in the court, including Judge Griesa, broke into laughter. Schurtman eventually caused a mistrial. It happened one afternoon when, for no apparent reason, he began examining the front cover of John and Yoko's Two Virgins (with both of them nude) in full view of the jury. To top it off, once Judge Griesa ended the proceedings, Schurtman walked over to John and asked him to autograph the album.
Following the mistrial, both parties again presented their case to Judge Griesa but this time without a jury. The second trial lasted until February 5. On February 20, Judge Griesa issued his twenty-nine-page opinion. He said he had no doubt that John had made a "tentative verbal agreement" with Morris Levy concerning Levy's right to issue John's "oldies" album on Adam VIII Records, but pointed out that John was never in a legal position to negotiate any deal related to his recordings because he was under an exclusive contract to EMI
In March 1976, John's counterclaim against Levy went to trial. John Lennon, Capitol Records and EMI Records were asking for reimbursement of lost income due to the release and sale of Roots. John was also asking for punitive damages for any harm to his career suffered because of the poor quality of Adam VIII's packaging
On July 13, Judge Griesa set the damages in Levy's original suit, awarding Big Seven Music Corporation $6,795 for John's breach of an oral agreement. In John's countersuit, Judge Griesa ruled that John, Capitol Records and EMI Records should receive $109,700 to compensate for lost income from the sale of Roots. John was also awarded an additional $35,000 in punitive damages.
Levy appealed but John was victorious again. However, the second judge reduced the amounts of the damages. In the opening of his opinion, the judge chose several lines from John's Nobody Loves You (When You're Down And Out) to comment on the circumstances of the case: "Everybody's hustlin' for a buck and a dime/I'11 scratch your back and you scratch mine.../All I can tell you is it's all show biz."
After the trial was over, John told Rolling Stone's Chet Flippo, "The reason I fought this was to discourage ridiculous suits like this. They didn't think I'd show or that I'd fight. They thought I'd just settle, but I won't."
Collectors should also be aware that about six months after Capitol Records stopped Adam VIII from distributing Roots, excellent-quality counterfeit copies surfaced in the United States and were later available in Canada, Great Britain, and Europe. While the color printing and quality of the vinyl were quite good, the lettering on the record label was below-par compared to genuine Adam VIII albums. Some of the counterfeits used the word "Greatest" instead of "Great" on the spine title, while others did not. ALL originals have the word "Great". Originals also had printed inner sleeves while the fakes used white sleeves. A good way to tell originals from counterfeits is on the back of the LP. On the ad for the LP Soul Train, the text printing is readable on originals but blurred on the fake copies.

The Rock 'N' Roll tapes originate from the legendary Phil Spector sessions in Los Angeles. An excellent quality version of Angel Baby is included after being deleted from Rock 'N' Roll by John. The number first surfaced illegally in the United States on Roots. The other rarity from Roots, John's cover of the Ronettes' Be My Baby remains "in the can". This collection also contains the only other known outtake from the Spector sessions, My Baby Left Me, the Arthur Crudup number.
Yoko managed to unearth two songs not known to exist: John's version of Spector's first hit, To Know Her Is To Love Her, plus an unreleased song written in the studio by John and Phil, Here We Go Again. The tracks are rounded out by John's original recording of Rock And Roll People, a song he gave to blues guitarist Johnny Winter in 1974 for his LP,

John Dawson Winter III