Walls and Bridges is the fifth studio album by English singer-songwriter John Lennon. It was issued by Apple Records on 26 September 1974 in the United States and on 4 October in the United Kingdom. Written, recorded and released during his 18-month separation from Yoko Ono, the album captured Lennon in the midst of his "Lost Weekend". Walls and Bridges was an American Billboard number-one album and featured two hit singles, "Whatever Gets You thru the Night" and "#9 Dream". The first of these was Lennon's first number-one hit in the United States as a solo artist, and his only chart-topping single in either the US or Britain during his lifetime.

The album was certified silver in the UK, and gold in the US.

In June 1973, as Lennon was about to record Mind Games, Ono decided that she and Lennon should separate. Lennon soon moved to California with his and Ono's personal assistant May Pang, after Ono had egged her on, and embarked upon an 18-month relationship with Pang he would later refer to as his "Lost Weekend". While he and Pang were living in Los Angeles, Lennon took the opportunity to get reacquainted with his son, Julian, whom he had not seen in four years.

Lennon had planned to record an album of rock 'n' roll oldies with producer Phil Spector, but these sessions became legendary not for the music produced but for the chaotic antics fuelled by alcohol. Lennon and Pang returned to New York and Spector disappeared with these session tapes. Around this time, Lennon had written several new songs during a stay at The Pierre and started recording a few home demos.

Lennon was rehearsing his new material with a handful of musicians at Record Plant East in New York City in July 1974. Musicians included Jim Keltner on drums, Klaus Voormann on bass, Jesse Ed Davis on guitar, and Arthur Jenkins on percussion. These were some of the players Lennon had been with in Los Angeles, but here they were under orders to avoid the drinking and carousing that had characterised the earlier interaction. The core players would be billed on the album as the Plastic Ono Nuclear Band, a variation on the Plastic Ono Band conceptual group moniker that many of Lennon's solo efforts were credited to.

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