John Peel on The Plastic Ono Band

John Peel added these thoughts about YOU are the Plastic Ono Band in the August 2nd 1969 edition.





It is nice to be, as Derek Taylor pointed out last week, a member of the Plastic Ono Band. If you remember, you are too - our first hit record and it is a good feeling. Play it somewhere friendly, and sing along and it does feel right.
Sometimes you must read the papers or hear the radio or even watch the degrading spectacle of television (remember when television had a capital "t"?) and feel sad at the cruelty, the stupidity and the selfishness of a great number of those with whom we share this planet. They will take it from us if we don't stop them. Then think, when you are saddened, about some of the good people who breathe the same air you do, who walk the same land you do and who see the same sunshine and feel the same rain as you. Most of them you'll never see or meet or know-but they're there and you'd like them, love them if you did meet then. John Lennon and Yoko are two of them.
I don't know the other Beatles - I've only met John and his lady twice and briefly: However I honestly feel as close to Yoko and John as I do to any other people on earth. To talk to the two of them is to talk to one person which sounds daft but isn't. The chances are good, that you'l1 never meet them and I probably won't again. It doesn't matter much anyway because it is a joy to know that they are alive somewhere. It is a joy to know that so many good and thoughtful people are alive somewhere - and some are no longer alive in the very narrowness of the idea of "living." It is good to know that YOU are alive. Perhaps it's just another record. Apple IS just another company, John and Yoko are just other people. To me it's a magic record and they are magic people.