There’s another hefty John Lennon box set on its way.
After last year’s Mind Games reissue, comes Power To The People, which looks at the 1971 - 1972 era. These were John and Yoko’s early years in New York, when the couple fell in with activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the time of the heavily-politicised Some Time In New York City album.
Power To The People includes a ‘reimagined’ and remixed version of that album, together with a treasure trove of unreleased tracks, demos, out-takes, home recordings and studio jams.
It also includes the two One To One concerts Lennon and Ono gave at Madison Square Garden, New York in August 1972, which were featured in last year’s One-to-One: John and Yoko documentary.
A pair of benefit gigs for the children at the Willowbrook institution on Staten Island, they would mark the last time Lennon would play a full concert.
At the time, Lennon enthused about the shows, telling the NME: “That Madison Square Garden gig was the best music I enjoyed playing since The Cavern or even Hamburg. It was just the same kind of feeling when The Beatles used to really get into it.”
Today, Yoko, writing in the preface to Power To The People, describes the One To One concerts as “our effort in Grassroots Politics. It embodied what John and I strongly believed in – Rock for Peace and Enlightenment.”
Co-ordinating the package is Sean Ono Lennon, who in a statement, said: “I was completely floored putting this collection together and getting to remix the concerts and hearing all the unreleased material from my parents’ archive for the first time. People may not realise how special it is for me to hear my dad talking or to see him.
"I grew up with a set number of images and audio clips that everyone’s familiar with. So to come across things that I’ve never seen or heard is really deep for me, because it’s almost like getting more time with my dad.”
“When I was eleven, my mum put out the Live In New York City album and film. So I grew up listening to it. It was a concert that had a legendary status in my mind, because it was my dad’s last concert.
"For the concerts, we spent a lot of time finding the best possible balance to keep the feeling of a live show while refining the overall sound as much as possible there was some meticulous and miraculous work with audio restoration. I won’t disclose all our techniques but there was some ‘movie magic’ required, and I think in the end, the shows sound better than ever.”
Power To The People comes in a variety of editions, ranging from a single CD of a hybrid of both the One To One concerts to a double CD of both shows, right up to the Super Deluxe edition, which features nine CDs, three Blu-Ray discs, a 204-page book, poster, postcards, stickers, and more.
They’re all out on October 10, the day after what would have been the ex-Beatle’s 85th birthday. Now there’s a thought.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.