John Lennon is widely believed to have written ‘Steel And Glass’ about his former business manager Allen Klein. The song appeared on his fifth solo album Walls And Bridges in 1974.
I was trying to write something nasty, and I really didn’t feel that nasty, but there’s some interesting musical stuff on it.
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
Klein had taken control of The Beatles’ business affairs in 1969, after the financial situation at Apple had become chaotic. He was also hired as John Lennon’s financial manager, and signed management contracts with George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
Klein’s appointment at Apple was always bitterly opposed by Paul McCartney, who was forced to sue Klein and the three other Beatles in 1970 in order to dissolve their business partnership.
The management contracts Klein held with Lennon, Harrison and Starr ended in 1973, by which time their previous enthusiasm for his working methods had soured. On 1970’s All Things Must Pass Harrison sang ‘Beware Of Darkness’, a thinly-veiled attack on Klein.
Although Lennon never admitted that ‘Steel And Glass’ was about Klein, it was widely interpreted as an attack on the pugnacious businessman. However, although he was trying to extricate himself from their contract, Lennon remained friends with Klein throughout the 1970s.
It actually isn’t about one person in particular, but it has been about a few people and, like a novel writer, if I’m writing about something other than myself, I use other people I know or have known as examples. If I want to write a ‘down’ song, I would have to remember being down, and when I wrote ‘Steel And Glass’ I used various people and objects. If I had listed who they were, it would be a few people, and you would be surprised. But it really isn’t about anybody. I’m loathe to tell you this, because it spoils the fun. I would sooner everybody think, ‘Who’s it about?’ and try and piece it together. For sure, it isn’t about Paul and it isn’t about Eartha Kitt.
Lennon recorded a guitar demo of ‘Steel And Glass’ in the summer of 1973, prior to studio work on Mind Games. At this stage he had the melody and a few lines of lyrics, but it would be another year before the song became the bitter diatribe as heard on Walls And Bridges.
A piano demo was taped in 1974. Again, the final lyrics were yet to be written. Although Lennon’s ideas were taking shape, it was largely based upon a single piano chord – a far cry from the embellished final studio recording.
Prior to recording Walls And Bridges in July 1974, Lennon spent around 10 days in pre-production at Sunset Studios and Record Plant East, New York. During this time he rehearsed a number of songs with the musicians he had recruited for the sessions.
An edited version of ‘Steel And Glass’ from this time was included on the posthumous collection Menlove Ave, released in 1986. A stark rendition with Lennon’s steel-string guitar to the fore, it lacked the string arrangement of the final version.
Walls And Bridges was recorded in July and August 1974. Take 8 of ‘Steel And Glass’ was released on the 1998 box set John Lennon Anthology, and sounded closer than ever to the final version, although with the reggae rhythms of the chorus more pronounced.
Take nine was the one used on Walls And Bridges. Once the basic track was complete a number of overdubs were added, including strings and brass. The soaring and swooping violins, in particular, were a clearly-intended echo of How Do You Sleep from 1971’s Imagine – an attack on Paul McCartney which featured lines suggested by Allen Klein.
I think John wrote this about himself. Maybe not (fully) consciously, but still.
I wondered if it was about his mother’s death? She was hit by a car… made of steel and glass.
At the start of the song John is heard whispering “Who is it? Who is it? and knowing John ( I wish ) that is exactly what he wanted people to be asking. A genius at creating questions and concealing answers ! He had a fantastic sense of humour….depicted in some of his songs ( Walrus , Mean Mr.Mustard,) and his books.
No one seems to dare mention it in his Wikipedia entry, but it’s possible Klein was mobbed up, based on his business dealing and ownership of the money-laundering label Cameo/Parkway. Another reason John might have remained oblique about any reference to him?
Clarification – what does John mean by saying, “it isn’t about Eartha Kitt.”? Eartha Kitt – what does that come from?
I don’t know. I suspect he’s saying something like “It’s not about Paul, or the postman, Uncle Tom Cobley, or anyone”, but chose EK instead. Or perhaps there’s some 1974 rumour I’m not aware of.
Robert,
Eartha Kitt is a kind non-sequitor. He could have mentioned anyone. Just part of his humor.
He means it isn’t about Eartha Kitt. It’s literally that simple.
I think it was a joke…Lennon style.
I thing at that way back then it was when yoko told John to leave yes than also he wad re-United with ringo and goerge also paul it was 1974. But going back to the song steel and glass mostly it’s about him also that few line’s when. John wrote your mother left you when you small your fone rings no one answers your calls hows feel you of the wall It’s about that his mum left him at the age 4 with his aunty Mimi
I’m sure it’s about Allen Klein despite John’s denials.
“There you stand with your L.A. tan
And your New York walk and your New York talk” is obvious Klein
“Your mother left you when you were small
But you’re going to wish you wasn’t born at all” – Klein’s mother died of cancer when he was 2.
“Steel and glass” – swaggers around like he’s made of steel but as transparent as glass.
Ironic that Lennon wrote the nasty How Do You Sleep in which Klein encouraged Lennon’s spiteful lyrics and then the same tune is used here to have a go at Klein.
John was tossed between 2 people his mum and his dad when he was asked then he was 4 yrs old by his parents who you like to be with well young kid choose his mum though he was then left care of his aunty Mimi and uncle goerge later his mum was walking back home after night out at his aunt’s house not less then moments crossing the road as she was getting home she got hit by an off duty drunk policeman. To spite of that moment
This is a great song off one of the most underrated solo Beatles albums of all time, Walls and Bridges. More than likely about Allen Klein, but what ever, John Lennon at his finest. Great vocals and rhythm guitar. When I got my first vinyl copy of this in 1982, I instantly loved this. # 9 Dream I knew from the time it appeared on the radio in 1975 and always loved.
With a album cover you could play with for hours
I’ve always believed this song was about John. Steel and Glass is a mirror. There you stand with your LA tan- John had run away to LA and was hanging with Nilsson and others… I think he was struggling with who he had become.
I think that Badbartimus’s interpretation is a good one. I also think it applied to John Lennon’s general psychology at the time. Remember that his phone was being wiretapped by the FBI and the US government for his political activism and that he had his demons to sort through. In any case, it is a great song which stylistically sounds a lot of like “How Do You Sleep”,
Steel and glass is a hypodermic needle
I love this track for me personally it has a sound that links to my ex wife, especially with lyrics such as ‘you leave your smell like an alley cat’. An extra plus is I can play it anywhere, even if my ex is around, and its significance is only known to me. Oh and of course those who read this.
It’s quite impressive how Lennon could pull all of this together, all these musically accomplished friends, and get all this down, and have fun and create mystery all at the same time. The logistics of it, the art, 9 takes… It’s a lot of orchestration, musically and socially.
Well, I’ve spent many hours analyzing the lyrics, studying Freud, Carl Jung, all the biggies of the psychoanalytical world. I’ve reached the conclusion that John wrote the song about himself! No, sorry, my mistake… I just remembered I actually saw the interview where John said “I wrote it about meself” lol
I don’t think he ever revealed who he had in mind when he wrote it, but I doubt it’s too deeply wrapped up in metaphor and symbolism. The lyrics aren’t really that shrouded in mystery. Sounds like he’s criticizing somebody for what he perceives as their phoniness, ruthlessness etc.. It’s just a cool, moody, funky tune.
It is about Klein. He might have thought about other mean people he met and even about himself in some parts. But it is mainly about the monster of rock. Well, at least that is what I feel. Don’t you think it is a bit like How do you Sleep? Gosh, when he sings steel and glass ..same notes of when he sings “How do you sleep…” I doubt it was a coincidence. Well, Klein helped him writing those lyrics against Paul. I feel he wanted to show Paul he was really sorry about that. So he sort of rewrote the song he made to hurt Paul this time to hurt Klein.
Something else. John had not a New York walk and not a New York talk. I listened to the song again. It is really ‘How to You sleep’. He erased the original and created “steel ad glass”. He recognized Paul had be right all the time. He informed so. So why did he deny? Big ego. Not possible to tell the world how much he regretted signed that man as manager. But I am sure Paul understood. Soon after Wall and bridges Paul went to visit him and LA and even sung “Stand by me” together. It is very clear. Not necessary to study psychology to understand that.
However Beware of Darkness could not be for Klein. George only discovered who in fact Klein was much later and he even declared he felt he was stubbed in the back because he had trusted on him. He also recognized Paul was right about Klein.
I’m going to throw in another vote for the song being mostly about John himself, written in a self-loathing mood. The New York walk and talk—I think that’s him acknowledging that he is starting to really become a New Yorker at that point, and maybe feeling like he’s lost himself a little. Paul told an anecdote once about teasing him about how NY he had started to sound, over the phone. And that iconic photo of him by Bob Gruen taken around this time comes to mind—from a 2010 New Yorker article:
‘ Gruen asked Lennon to put on a T-shirt he’d bought on the sidewalk for $5—white with NEW YORK CITY in bold black type, the black sleeves cut off with a buck knife for a tougher effect. It seemed right: “John had been in the city awhile,” says Gruen. “He was becoming a New Yorker.” One of the shots captures Lennon pale and unsmiling, his arms folded across his stomach. “That was his street stance,” says Pang. “John was self-conscious about the cutoff sleeves, but I assured him it was fine.”’
And the LA tan could of course refer to the 18 months “lost weekend” spent primarily in LA.
As has been pointed out, steel and glass can work like mirrors, reflecting your own image. They also describe New York City and all those steel and glass buildings pretty well.
People have discussed the line about his mother’s abandonment, something he’s sung about before. But I don’t know if anyone’s brought up this line: “Your mouthpiece squawks as he spreads your lies / But you can’t pull strings when you arms are tied.” In 1974, John wanted to stop Jann Wenner from reprinting John’s interview with him for The Rolling Stone in 1970 but Wenner went and did it anyway, and John had no legal way to prevent it. At that time, he deeply regretted things he’d said in the interview, and even sent a photo of him and Paul together in LA in 73 to Wenner with the caption, “How do YOU Sleep?!?!”
And speaking of HDYS, John said in a couple interviews that he’d decided that it was more about him than about Paul, meaning I think that it says more about John in the end. He also mentioned at one point that he still liked the song musically and wished he’d saved it for something else, and that maybe he would rewrite it someday. I believe Steel and Glass is the rewrite, and to carry the “HDYS was really about me actually” idea all the way through, it’s a song that is literally about John himself.
But also about his anger at Wenner. And maybe there’s some anger at Klein in there too.
I thought this snippet from his interview-with-himself for Andy Warhol’s magazine was neat:
A. Next you’ll be asking me who “Steel And Glass” is about (3rd track side 2..).. I can tell you who it isn’t about, for instance, it’s not about Jackie Kennedy, Mort Sahl, Sammy Davis, Better Midler… Eartha Kitt, it’s not about her either….
Q. It’s not Paul again… is it? I mean you two are like… I mean grow up…
A. Wrong again.
(The whole “interview” is pretty fun and interesting.)
Anyway, those are my thoughts. (Wish I could get anything out of the last stanza though. Does someone have capped teeth? Who’s leaving their scent—John?)
It’s long out of print now, so this is not a plug, but in my 2001 book ‘Bob Dylan: The Concerts – The 60’s’, I point out that there are more than a few passing, or glancing, references to Bob Dylan in ‘Steel And Glass’. Namely:
1] ‘This is a story about your friend and mine’ – at the 1971 Concert For Bangladesh, George introduced Bob to the stage with the words, “I’d like to bring on a friend to us all, Mr Bob Dylan.”
2] ‘There you stand with your L.A. tan’ – Bob living in Malibu in the early to late 70’s.
3] ‘New York walk and your New York talk’ – a] Bob is most associated with New York, from the coffee house days up to the mid-60s, and then after leaving Woodstock, back there again in the late 60’s up to early 1972 (Bob met up with John and Yoko several times when they first moved to the Village); and b] the opening verse of Bob’s song, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ : ‘Now you don’t talk so loud… now you don’t walk so proud’ (amended to ‘seem’ for the chosen studio version).
4] ‘How does it feel to be off the wall.’ Again, the classic opening line of the chorus to ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ – ‘How does it feel… to be on your own?’
There are a couple of other faint shadows of Bob, but they are tenuous – ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ mentions a Siamese, rather than an alley cat, although ‘Tombstone Blues’, the next track after ‘LARS’ on “Highway 61 Revisited”, has ‘Daddy in the alley’; and ‘Lay Lady Lay’ has hands, not teeth, that are clean.
it must be noted that ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ was one of John’s favourite songs of Bob’s – ‘Dig It’ being a vamp on the chords to it, for one (although of course Bob’s music is ‘similar’ [cough] to that of ‘Twist And Shout’); and John naming it when stating that his favourite period of Bob was Dylan’s mid-60’s ‘angry’ phase. It may very well be that, looking to stir up some anger in himself when he was not feeling that way, he thought of Bob’s song and used it as a source of ignition. Considering his troubles with Chuck Berry’s publishers on ‘Come Together’, a high percentage of John’s lyrics to ‘Steel And Glass’ do appear in ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, and John was fortunate, or deliberately wise, that they appear at instances, rather than as a couplet anywhere.
It might also be that there is an aside-swipe at Mick Jagger, if the references to ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ are John being less than fully oblique; as also revealed in my book, Bob Dylan wrote ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, in the main, about Marianne Faithful, after she rebutted his advances in London in May 1965 (‘finest school all right’, ‘with your diplomat’, ‘[you] like a Rolling Stone’, etc etc). Mick was certainly living in and out of LA in the second quarter of the 1970’s, and visiting John and May at their apartment quite often, but John and Mick’s relationship had always seemed, according to both parties, friendly. Not that John couldn’t answer back at a comment he felt uncalled for, as many hundreds will attest to.
Oh, and so far as I know, there is no reference to Eartha Kitt in any Bob Dylan song!