Written by: Lennon
Recorded: Summer 1970
Producers: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Phil Spector
Released: 11 December 1970
Available on:
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
Acoustic
Personnel
John Lennon: vocals, electric guitar
Where was there left to go after John Lennon’s declaration that The Beatles’ dream was over? His début solo album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band contained a postscript, a 50-second song fragment about the loss of his mother which brought the collection full circle.
‘My Mummy’s Dead’ was a solo performance recorded in the summer of 1970 with just vocals and electric guitar. It was a low-fidelity mono recording made at 841 Nimes Road in Bel Air, California, where Lennon and Yoko Ono stayed while undergoing Primal Therapy with Dr Arthur Janov.
Lennon recorded two takes of the song onto cassette tape. The first take appeared on the album, and take 2 was released on the Acoustic album in 2004. Lennon’s tape featured the words “My Mummys Dead 1st take is it” written on the label.
A simple four-line song based on a three-note melody, it was perhaps the most raw and emotionally-naked piece of songwriting he ever wrote.
All these songs just came out of me. I didn’t sit down to think, ‘I’m going to write about my mother’ or I didn’t sit down to think, ‘I’m going to write about this, that or the other.’ They all came out, like all the best work of anybody’s ever does.
Lennon Remembers, Jann S Wenner
‘Mother’ and ‘My Mummy’s Dead’ bookended John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Whereas he’d began the album with primal howls of anguish, it ends with weary acceptance. If this was Lennon’s attempt at closure for the heartbreak of 15 July 1958 which he had never fully addressed, the effect was of numb emptiness rather than sorrow.
‘My Mummy’s Dead’ was mixed in Studio 3 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, on 25 October 1970. The engineers were Phil McDonald and Andy Stephens.
Lennon’s home recording was slightly sped up and treated with EQ to make it sound as though it was coming from a small radio speaker.
The melody is ‘Three Blind Mice’ and the sound was achieved by John singing and playing through a telephone and being recorded on the other end.
The simplicity of the guitar makes me think of a children’s toy piano. In my head, that’s what I hear.