Shaved Fish (1975) 


 

  1. Give Peace a Chance
  2. Cold Turkey
  3. Instant Karma!
  4. Power to the People
  5. Mother
  6. Woman is the Ni**er of the world
  7. Imagine
  8. Whatever Gets You Thru the Night
  9. Mind Games
  10.#9 Dream
  11.Medley:Happy Xmas(War is Over)/
     Give Peace a Chance (Reprise)

 

Released in 1975, Shaved Fish was John Lennon’s first—and, during his lifetime, only—solo compilation. It arrived at a curious juncture: Lennon had announced a step back from recording, retiring to focus on his family life, and for a time, it was genuinely unclear whether he would return to music at all. In that light, the album reads less like a victory lap and more like a punctuation mark—if not a final one, then at least a pause of indeterminate length.

The compilation gathers most of Lennon’s solo singles to date, charting a path from 1969’s Give Peace a Chance through to #9 Dream from the previous year’s Walls and Bridges. The sequencing is erratic, and the packaging—a surreal collage of lyrics and iconography—is more visually striking than narratively helpful. But as a snapshot of Lennon’s first post-Beatles chapter, Shaved Fish does an admirable job of highlighting both his peaks and peculiarities.

Nearly all of Lennon’s defining solo moments are here: the anthemic idealism of Imagine, the confessional fragility of Jealous Guy, the raw angst of Cold Turkey, and the directness of Instant Karma!. Together, they form a portrait of an artist who was as mercurial as he was magnetic—by turns angry, tender, political, and absurd. That said, Shaved Fish is not without its shortcomings. It omits album tracks entirely, meaning that some of Lennon’s most cohesive and affecting work from Plastic Ono Band and Walls and Bridges is overlooked. In its place are standalone singles, which, while often powerful, make the collection feel more like a greatest-singles set than a holistic overview. Then there’s Woman Is the N***** of the World, included here without compromise. Whatever its rhetorical intentions, the track remains deeply polarizing, and its presence slightly skews the compilation’s tone. For a record aimed at summarizing Lennon’s reach as a solo artist, it’s an abrasive inclusion that risks alienating listeners not already steeped in Lennon’s particular brand of provocation.

In the decades since its release, Shaved Fish has been eclipsed by more expansive retrospectives, each more thorough and balanced. But in its time, it served a purpose. It offered closure—temporary, as it turned out—for a chapter that felt, at the time, like it might be the last. What it lacks in curation, it makes up for in immediacy. This was Lennon in real time: flawed, brilliant, unpredictable, and, in spite of himself, still chasing the truth.

Go back to the main page
Go To Next Review