This week’s BROW honors a request from last week for an original recording of John Lennon’s Free As A Bird. This is one of the original piano demos recorded on an audio cassette by John in 1977. Later when Paul McCartney asked Yoko Ono for any unreleased material by John, she gave him a recording of this song along with Real Love, Grow Old With Me and Now And Then. Free As A Bird was then chosen to be the best one to be completed by the remaining Beatles for use on the upcoming Beatles Anthology project in 1996. George Martin was originally offered the opportunity to produce but declined due to his hearing limitations and Jeff Lynne, who had worked with George Harrison and the Traveling Wilburys was given the job. Since John’s piano and vocal were on a single track, his voice could not be separated from the piano and it was used on the final production even though some chord changes were edited in for the sake of extending the song and adding a break for an extra vocal part by Paul and George. The demo heard here is known as demo take 1 and from it we can hear that John still had some lyrics to work out. Some lyrics were modified on later piano demos (such as demo #3 where John sings It’s the nearest thing to be…Free As A Bird instead of It’s the next best thing to be…Free As A Bird) but the lyrics were not finalized until Paul, George and Ringo worked on the full production version. Hats off to Dermahrk for the request.

John Lennon at 40th birthday party, Oct. 9, 1980

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