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The 20th of February 1974

Official U.K. Albums Chart results from Sunday the 17th to Saturday the 23rd of February 1974

Cut-off for sales figures was up to the end of Saturday the 16th of February

Results counted from Sunday the 17th,

and published on Wednesday the 20th of February 1974.

John Lennon

Mind Games

At No.43, on the “The Top 50 U.K. Albums Chart”, the week of my 2nd Birthday, is John Lennon with Mind Games.

John’s latest album,..

…had released during a crucial event-filled time in his personal life, which was now going through an almost self-destructive mode.

His previous album had been such a car-crash of painful prose in a whirlwind of frustrations and outbursts; not just to himself, but to all who had to suffer the four sides of the double album, that his followers were treading any new output with caution as to what they would find inside.

With all of his Internal wrangling…

…since his last release, he’d had to take a year away himself before stepping back into the fray with this LP. His fight with the American government just to live there was still ongoing with (at this point) no end in sight; due to his political outbursts, the FBI were tapping his phones, giving him an uncontrollable dose of paranoia. He had basically been told, indirectly by the president of the United States, that he was not welcome in the country; and to top it all off, the whole damn mess was affecting his marriage to Yoko.

In fact, the past year had taken so much out of him that he was now adding a fresh period of depression to everything that had come before.

Altogether, he was just trying his hardest to write all of this out into the open, trying to make sense of it all. Although, by this point his fate was not in his own control entirely but more more in Yoko’s.

As her husband was getting so uncontrollable, she ultimately decided that to save him, he needed to get his demons exorcised in the only way he could; and so exiled him from the relationship, for him to keep spinning off his own top uncontrollably. Ironic really, that to heal him, he basically needed to self-destruct.

Goodbye married life, hello Lost Weekend.

So we have here…

…a record, which, due to all these things going on inside him, is surprisingly some of his most important self-reflective work. A collection that, to me looking in, seems to be from a man who just doesn’t understand anymore, knows he’s dangerously close to an edge, scared, terrified even, but knows he doesn’t want to jump; and is putting his hands up in surrender for fear that, if he keeps going the other way, he’ll be pushed over regardless.

He knew in this dark place how deeply personal he felt about it, that’s why he took so much control over this one; more than he had done with any other album in his catalogue thus far. Deciding, for the first time, to self-produce this one entirely on his own.

It comes from someone who hasn’t got much left to lose and he knows it. Most people wouldn’t even think of writing this sort of stuff down in a diary, or even dare trust enough to confide to another soul about how he was feeling; but here’s John, laying the whole lot out to the world on two sides of a vinyl record, as if that is the only way he knows.

The album…

…had entered the UK chart last year on the second day of December 1973 at a lowly No.43, but by the following week had soared up to a far more healthier No.13; a position that so far it is yet to better.

The following third week in mid-December would place it back two spaces to No.15, a place which it would occupy for nigh on a month, before it settles more into the mid-chart region in this New Year of 1974. It only begins to get lower as time moves onward into this last winter month of February. By which point, John, along with his good friend Harry, is completely lost in himself in L.A.

From here,..

…the album will drop out of the chart altogether after the 23rd of February. However, at the time of writing, it has once more reappeared for one week only.

Travelling onwards through the years, into a new millennium, and another couple of decades from there, the album (now in a choice of various formats) enters back into what is by now the Top 100, and places itself on the 19th of July 2024 for one more week at No.39, before it departs once again; giving the album a non-running tally so far of 13 non-consecutive weeks in the UK chart.