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I think I have only recently understood the purpose of "Well Well Well".

At first, I thought the lyrics were junk filler like "Dig A Pony" or something.

However, it occurred to me more recently, that this is unlikely for a number of reasons:

• It appears on Plastic Ono Band. If it were meaningless it would be the only song on the album in this category.
• He was proud of the song, performing it live on a few occasions. This was a period when he was conscious of the abstract ideas in his songs. Seems unlikely he would be proud of the song if it were only funky electric guitar sounds and nothing else.
• He was getting increasingly politically engaged at this time, including with Marxist, even Maoist ideas, as made clear from his Red Mole interview around the same time. (https://www.counterpunch.org/2005/12/08/the-lost-john-lennon-interview/)

With that said, here is what I think the song is about. It's about liberals with good intentions but no tangible path forward, who are therefore reduced to incoherently going "Well well well".

>I took my loved one out to dinner
So we could get a bite to eat
And though we both had been much thinner
She looked so beautiful I could eat her
Well Well Well Oh Well

>We sat and talked of revolution
just like to librals in the sun
we talked of womens liberation
and how the hell we could get thing done
Well Well Well Oh Well

>I took my loved one to a big field
So we could watch the english sky
Were both feeling guilty
And neither one of us knew just why
Well Well Well Oh Well

"Well Well Well" serves a double meaning: "Well well, I'm thinking, I don't really know what to say". And also, "Oh well, that's a shame, whoopdedoo, whaddya gonna do?"

The "feeling guilty" he refers to is precisely the guilt of liberals who aren't prepared to risk their comfortable, bourgeois life styles (alluded to at the beginning of the song, where it mentions dinner, being slightly plump, and oral sex with a beautiful girlfriend or wife).

And of course, he is talking about himself and Yoko Ono, but also it applies to most well-intentioned liberal couples.

Intriguingly, the "Well Well Well" becomes desperate, blood-curdling, suggesting that there is actually a kind of despair at the bottom here; that any resolution, requires either the guilt becoming a kind of all-consuming complex (fits with the therapeutic theme of the album), or being acted on and thereby leading to some kind of revolutionary struggle/upheaval and all the pain associated.

The "badass" electric guitar music might be interpreted both as making fun of the risk-averse liberal couple but also a genuine abrasive, hard-edged revolutionary sentiment.

Thus everything about the song fits together and it's not out of place on Plastic Ono Band at all, but on the contrary, it is the perfect addition.

Edit: Okay, this is showing why Reddit is such a cesspool. I have been insulted for writing this post, with numerous comments from one person ridiculing me for being really dumb because all I am doing is stating a literal interpretation of the lyrics.

I don't believe this is true at all. I'm not giving a literal interpretation of the lyrics. I did the due diligence before posting and what I have written is somewhat different than what I found elsewhere.

Furthermore, I don't think the song would have been well-conceived if it was all totally explicit and obvious. I think the person insulting me just doesn't have a ****ing clue what he's talking about.

John lennon is still alive, he just became a cardboard cutout

On this date in 1946 Julia and Fred Lennon made their son John decide which of them he wanted to live with. After wavering the boy picked his mother and he wouldn’t see his father again until Beatlemania.
Interestingly, Mark Lewisohn thinks Lennon misremembered the event and that, while it may have felt that way to the small boy, according to witnesses the parents had already decided he would be raised in Liverpool with her family.