{"id":80,"date":"2009-10-22T15:51:37","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T20:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=80"},"modified":"2025-10-26T14:48:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T18:48:13","slug":"album-review-julian-lennon-help-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2009\/10\/22\/album-review-julian-lennon-help-yourself\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Julian Lennon – Help Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"

NOTE<\/strong>: In 2009 Noble Rot reissued three of Julian Lennon<\/strong>‘s albums. They didn’t reissue the Valotte<\/a><\/em> debut, nor did they put out a new release of Photograph Smile<\/a><\/em>, Julian’s 1999 album (and arguably the finest work he’s produced). Instead, this new label — in keeping with its reputation for unearthing underappreciated albums from the ’80s and ’90s such as those by Toy Matinee<\/a> and Marc Bonilla<\/a> — released digipack versions of The Secret Value of Daydreaming<\/em><\/a> (1986), Mr. Jordan<\/a><\/em> (1989) and 1991’s Help Yourself<\/a><\/em>. Here’s the fourth in a series of five reviews.<\/p>\n

\n

\"JulianIn 1991 — five years after releasing Mr. Jordan<\/em> — Julian Lennon<\/strong> would return with Help Yourself<\/em>. Working with the estimable Bob Ezrin<\/strong> as producer (Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper<\/strong>), the album kicks off with an ambitious number, “Rebel King.” The vocals in particular sound as if Ezrin brought along the female chorus from a Pink Floyd session. What’s more, lead playing from Steve Hunter<\/strong> (Alice Cooper, Lou Reed<\/strong>, both past Ezrin clients) adds to the bombast in a pleasing way. Julian’s voice still heads for the low notes at times, but here — unlike on the last album — he doesn’t sound like David Bowie<\/strong>. Not at all.This very promising start is followed up by the disc’s highlight, “Saltwater”, a song that explores Julian’s environmental concerns. The Mellotron flutes and strings don’t hurt, either. These slow-to-midtempo pieces — likely written on piano — are truly Julian’s m\u00e9tier. “Get a Life” — despite co-composing credit by Squeeze<\/strong>‘s Glenn Tilbrook — starts out sounding like a rock version of the verses from John Lennon<\/strong>‘s “Give Peace Chance”. But then the chorus kicks into gear and sounds like…Julian Lennon and Squeeze.<\/p>\n

On Help Yourself<\/em> Julian would work more closely with his original musical cohorts, as well. Justin Clayton cowrites a few songs on the album, including “Maybe I Was Wrong,” another track hinting at a return-to-form approach. Overall this album finds Julian on firm footing and on the right track, asserting his own style and\/or assimilating his influences into something cohesive. The title track sounds modern and pleasantly classicist all at once. “Listen” features a dated arrangement, with its brittle, sterile Yamaha CP-70 piano bed and gated-reverb drums, but musically it wouldn’t be out of place on Valotte<\/em>. The soaring “Other Side of Town” marks Julian’s first recorded duet, featuring nice vocal work from the Blue Nile<\/strong>‘s Paul Buchanan.<\/p>\n

But “New Physics Rant” proves that Julian is capable of severe missteps like anyone else. Here he sounds like Mr. Bowie again, and he (sort of) raps. A Girl Scout troop guests on vocals. They don’t need no ed-u-cay-shun. Presumably we can blame Ezrin for this one; he did co-write the track, after all. The album wraps up with a real oddity: a track in which Lennon had no hand in composing. And it’s pretty awful; it bears no sonic relation to anything Julian had done before, and didn’t — we could hope — point the way toward a future direction. “Keep the People Working” sounds like nothing so much as one of the “songs” from Stomp<\/em>. Bo Diddley<\/strong> is spinning in his grave.<\/p>\n

And that would be it from Julian for nearly a decade. Lennon did co-write “If You Want the Sun to Shine” with Pat DiNizio for the Smithereens<\/strong>‘ Blow Up<\/em> album, but other than that he got on with his life.<\/p>\n

Any survey of Julian’s work that doesn’t discuss Photograph Smile<\/em><\/a> does the man a terrible disservice. I’ll take a look at that one — his last release to date — next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NOTE: In 2009 Noble Rot reissued three of Julian Lennon‘s albums. They didn’t reissue the Valotte debut, nor did they put out a new release of Photograph Smile, Julian’s 1999 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30225,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/30225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}