Like Tangerine, I'm not familiar enough with John's solo albums to comment. *is instantly booted off thread*
These comments seem key to me:
Once John got past his introspective/angry/political phase he seems to have run out of ideas.
I think the mauling he got over New York City really damaged his confidence.
To me, successful creativity is a combination of having something to say and being able to say it with confidence. All the ex-Beatles took their drubbings in the press, and I think it affected all of them. I personally think the critics were unfairly harsh against some of the solo albums, because people were expecting so much (as Kevin said), and no one could match up to the Beatles, including ex-Beatles. With the perspective of time, I think most of us are realizing just how rare and wonderful that initial combination of talent was.
Nevertheless, in John's case, I think there was more going on than loss of confidence. He had some personal challenges, to say no more, that can't have helped his solo output or quality. I just watched this very good interview last night. In part 2 here -
- he starts talking about how "Rock & Roll" came about, and he really was looking for some different approach from the angry, political Lennon. But he really didn't know what to do, so fell back to producing these old standards. In short, he couldn't figure out what he wanted to "say". (Er, that's me editorializing; he didn't actually say that.)
It's a vicious circle. You want to be creative and unique, but you also want to be commercially viable (so you can keep doing your thing). But you can't be too "creative" or too commercial, or you turn people off. Is it a wonder that people often can produce "only" one masterpiece? Getting the stars to align just right is mighty tricky. I'm inclined to be generous towards anyone who has had their "one" success. You have to overcome a lot of obstacles to do it even once; to keep doing it is something of a miracle.