The Meaning Behind "Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out)" by John Lennon ...
Who knows what the four movies directed by Sam Mendes about The Beatles will look like when released in 2027. Will they perhaps move into areas outside of their time with the group? If so, the time in John Lennon‘s life when he made the album Walls and Bridges and recorded the song “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down and Out)” might be an interesting one to explore.
What is the song about? Who was the artist Lennon had in mind when writing it? And what was going on in Lennon’s personal life that engendered such raw feelings? All the answers ahead as we dive into this somewhat unheralded Lennon album cut.
After the brilliant one-two punch of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine started off his post-Beatles career, Lennon floundered a bit. Problems in his personal life certainly didn’t help matters. A separation from Yoko Ono and a move to Los Angeles with new girlfriend May Pang led to Lennon’s infamous “Lost Weekend” period, one where drugs and alcohol stunted any creative tendencies he might have felt.
Luckily, he managed to pull it together in the summer of 1974, putting aside the excesses for a while and returning to New York to record the album titled Walls and Bridges. Perhaps because he was momentarily free from the drugs and booze, Lennon found clarity and was able to articulate his feelings at this difficult time in his life, as he explained to David Sheff in the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono:
“I think I was more in a morass mentally than Yoko was. If you listen to Walls And Bridges you hear somebody that is depressed. You can say, ‘Well, it was because of years of fighting deportation and this problem and that problem,’ but whatever it was, it sounds depressing. The guy knows how to make tables, but there’s no spirit in the tables. I’m not knocking the record. But I’m saying it showed where I was. It’s a reflection of the time.”
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
