Album Reviews

Another murder most foul to revisit. Where were you on December 8th 1980 when the terrible news broke that John Lennon had been assassinated? A girlfriend and I were having dinner with Chuck and Nancy (not Schumer and Pelosi) and with Arnold and Maria (yes, Schwarzenegger and Shriver).

In those days, news came via a phone call. My friend picked up the phone and his face turned ashen, doubly so since he had a Kennedy family connection, which explains Arnold and Maria’s presence.

We dropped our utensils and ran to the television. It was another awful evening, one of many for the Baby Boomer generation.

John Lennon would be 80 years old today, assuming that years of “excess” hadn’t taken him well before now as it has so many other rock stars—even those who like Lennon cleaned up their acts.

Many Beatles fans, even in 1980— years after the band broke up—had a mixed relationship with John Lennon. When, in the song “God” from the 1971 album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, he sang “I don’t believe it Beatles” (never mind that he further rubbed it in singing he didn’t believe in “Jesus”, “Kennedy” and “Elvis”) and that “the dream is over”, the sense of abandonment and betrayal was palpable. Fans worldwide felt it, in part because it was among his finest vocal performances.

True, Lennon was just saying “time for you to grow up because I have”. That was a worthy message and probably a much needed generational slap in the face, but as he ticked off the list of what he no longer believed in having gone through primal therapy, saving “Beatles” for the final dagger thrust it felt like nothing less than an ambush.

I remember at the time thinking “Well fine, you no longer believe in Beatles, or Elvis or apparently fandom, so just stop making records and sail off into the sunset with your Yoko”.

But, of course as the 1970s got rolling that album also contained “I Found Out” one of Lennon’s most bitter and truthful songs that resonated deeply. It’s not among the 36 songs on this compilation.

Most fans vowing to abandon Lennon quickly returned when late in 1971 he released Imagine a commercially successful album containing many enduring Lennon songs including this box set’s title, though, “How Do You Sleep?” his vicious dig at Paul McCartney unsettled and repelled many fans (though in Lennon’s undated interview here he insists that “Paul personally doesn’t feel as though I insulted him or anything because I had dinner with him last week; he’s quite happy. If I can’t have a fight with my best friend I don’t know who I can have a fight with”. Also among the interviews Lennon says of “Come Together” “…it is nothing like the Chuck Berry song.”

The unpredictable artist then ran off the commercial rails with Some Time in New York a double LP set backed by Elephant’s Memory. It was a sophomoric, moralizing “revolutionary” album that included songs with some laudable themes dealing with women’s equality, race relations and Britain’s role in Norther Ireland but it was heavy handed and a commercial failure. It also dealt with Nixon’s deportation plans for Lennon, a black mark on American “freedom”.

Other than the title track Mind Games released late 1973 was a dispirited set. During the recording Lennon and Yoko broke up and thus began his two year “Lost Weekend” during which he shuttled between L.A. and New York, finally returning in 1974 to record Walls and Bridges, which included “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” and the haunting “#9 Dream”. During the “Lost Weekend” Lennon also co-wrote “Fame” with David Bowie.

Lennon took a five year musical break to devote himself to raising son Sean. In the fall of 1980 he recorded the single “(Just Like) Starting Over” and later released the album Double Fantasy. And then……. The posthumous album Milk and Honey was released in 1984.

The 36 songs presented here in a 4 LP box and a 2 CD+ Blu-ray package containing both high resolution stereo and surround mixes in 5.1 and Dolby Atmos, with hard bound book are culled from singles (including “Happy Xmas [War Is Over])”, album tracks, live performances (including a memorable “Come Together” with Lennon backed by Elephant’s Memory at the One to One Concert recorded August 30th 1972 at MSG) and the 1980 “Grow Old” cassette demo produced in 1998.

Lennon the great rock and roll singer, Lennon the tender romantic, Lennon the skilled melodist, Lennon the angry kid, Lennon the amateur psychiatrist, Lennon the uncompromising idealist, Lennon the leftist “community organizer”, Lennon the self-centered, Lennon the singing my personal love sentiments to the world, and Lennon the great guitarist and producer are all represented here, artfully condensed down from the classic albums and the failures into a powerful summation of an artist whose contributions to our Boomer lives and generations beyond cannot be overstated. How lucky we were/are to have him come along when he did. How sad he left so early.

The concept here was to remix the songs from the multitrack tapes, remaining faithful and respectful to the originals, while producing greater overall sonic clarity and especially concentrating on clarifying John’s vocals, which he often underplayed because he didn’t think he was a good singer.

Sean Lennon wanted to retain the “analog” nature of the originals so Paul Hicks who engineered and mixed the compilation (he did likewise on the 2018 Imagine box set) did as much as possible in the analog domain, rather than resorting to “modern” effects. The original analog multitrack tapes were baked and transferred to I assume high resolution digital (the set doesn’t provide that detail but I assume, like the Imagine box it was 96/24).

The remixes were partly done at Henson Recording Studios in LA (formerly A&M Studios) using vintage analog plate reverbs and outboard effects. The book credits also list Abbey Road Studios, Sear Sound, The Hix Factory and REVL8 as mixing locations.

The resulting stereo files were taken to Abbey Road for mastering, again, according to the annotation “…entirely in the analog environment”. Hicks writes about “finishing in analogue”, but what exactly that means he doesn’t make clear. Nor does it really matter. What matters is how these remixes sound.

Naturally I started with the 4 LP box set (two LPs in each of two gatefold jackets), lacquers cut and pressed at GZ Media with files supplied by Alex Wharton at Abbey Road Studios. The box includes a poster, a sticker, two post cards and a booklet.

These mixes are definitely and unsubtly warm! The warmth works great on many tracks and not so well on others—and that’s both on CD and LP, though the CD sound is somewhat brighter, more dynamic and puts greater emphasis on the bass lines. I don’t know if GZ fiddled with the files to attenuate the bass somewhat because all of it can be cut if it’s there to cut.

The third track, “Working Class Hero”, had me thinking “This is now a folk song”, so warm and rich is the acoustic guitar and Lennon’s voice. Somewhere along the line, and sorry I didn’t take notes, I found myself saying, “This is just too warm on top”! Cymbals have to clash!” But that’s just being picky. If this set is John Lennon, Folk Singer I’m okay with that because Lennon’s vocals star and that’s the point.

These mixes exude intimacy in ways the cooler originals missed (yes they were AAA but many were also were from the coke era) and while I usually object to mix uniformity from originals that were all very different, it works well here.

If you have to choose one package, I’d go with the CD+Blu ray. The 4 LP set does not include the book and the book is key. Each song is well annotated in Lennon’s own words taken from interviews (plus many include Yoko’s comments), and each song gets full and thorough credits plus more (photos memorabilia). I’ve yet to explore the Blu-ray. I wanted to get this published on Lennon’s birthday. Happy Birthday John Lennon. Sorry to say war is hardly over but this superbly produced and packaged set is a birthday present from you to us. It is a long overdue definitive “greatest hits” package very well presented.