It was promoter John Brower’s lucky day on September 12th, 1969. He called Apple to see if John & Yoko could possibly lend some credibility to his Rock & Roll Revival Festival the following night by flying in and introducing one of the acts. Surprise! John said he’d come, but only if he could play. Brower would’ve never even considered asking for a performance. After all, none of The Beatles had performed onstage since the summer of 1966, unless you count a few songs on a rooftop at Apple. John could not consider the other Beatles to join him as Ringo had just returned from the hospital and Paul was home with his new baby, Mary, and George simply just hated touring altogether. Instead, John got in touch with his old friend Klaus Voormann and drummer Alan White, who both agreed to play. He asked Eric Clapton to come along too and didn’t get an answer till the following morning, when Eric was finally reached by telegram. This five piece line up became the first incarnation of The Plastic Ono Band. Only one day after receiving Brower’s phone call, John was onstage opening with a favorite – Carl Perkin’s classic “Blue Suede Shoes,” which was also covered by Elvis Presley. John acknowledges this in the performance by doing his ‘Elvis legs’ before the crowd. The show came off quite well, and John was pleased that he was able to put a band together in a matter of hours, with the complete freedom of playing and improvising at will. In fact, he was so thrilled about it, he informed acting manager Alan Klein that he had decided to quit The Beatles.

Click the image above to play the video.

Extra info: On Dec. 12, 1969, the entire performance was released on the Apple LP Plastic Ono Band – Live Peace In Toronto 1969.

Here are some Amazon links to read more on, or purchase, some music related to this post:

1) Live Peace in Toronto 1969 – 1995 stereo CD remaster of original 1969 LP of the entire performance by John Lennon/The Plastic Ono Band, including “Blue Suede Shoes”.

2) John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band – Sweet Toronto – DVD release of the entire performance by John Lennon/The Plastic Ono Band, including “Blue Suede Shoes”.

3) More Amazon links for any of your favorite Beatles-related music: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

Related posts:

1. Beatles Rarity Of The Week – “Laugh” (Plastic Ono People out-take, 1969) This week’s BROW is available as a podcast. This one...
2. Beatles Rarity Of The Week – Remember (out-take from Plastic Ono Band sessions, 1971) Welcome to the Beatles Rarity of the Week. John Lennon’s...
3. Beatles Rarity Of The Week – How Do You Sleep (take 4) Welcome to BROW. There was still a bit of a...

Welcome to the Beatles Rarity of the Week. John Lennon’s first project after the April 1970 official breakup of The Beatles was to attend primal therapy sessions with his wife, Yoko. Under the guidance of psychotherapist Arthur Janov, who created this trauma-based therapeutic treatment, the Ono-Lennons learned how to resolve the trauma and suppressed pain that they experienced in their childhoods, by reliving it and fully expressing the emotions that occurred at that time. Of course with John, this was all to do with the pent up anger and pain he had felt over the years as a result of the death of his mother, the abandonment by his father, and the rejection he experienced with his family and school during the years he was growing up. Primal therapy became a widespread and influential form of treatment during a brief period in the early 1970s, after the publication of Janov’s first book, The Primal Scream.

Shortly afterward, during the fall of 1970, both John and Yoko began working on two separate albums, both of which were their first non-experimental studio album, and first LP since the official breakup of The Beatles. Recording commenced between September 26th and October 27th, 1970, by which time John and Yoko had decided to make each album a self-titled album that carried on the conceptual Plastic Ono Band entity which consisted only of the supporting musicians that they were playing with at the time. John’s primal therapy experience greatly influenced the lyrics and style of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, which included tracks that had obvious references to to painful parts of his early life. Of course I’m referring to the well-known tracks like Mother, Working Class Hero and God. Rolling Stone magazine listed the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band LP at number 22 in their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2003) and number 4 in the 100 Best Albums of 1967-1987 (1987).

This week’s BROW features Remember, which like other tracks on the record, has lyrics inspired by Janov’s teachings. John sings of unpleasant childhood memories of family conflict and clashes with parents, authority and peers. Ringo Starr plays drums on the track, while John’s old friend from Hamburg, Klaus Voormann, plays bass. Klaus had also played on John’s previous concert album release Plastic Ono Band – Live Peace In Toronto. John plays piano and handles all of the lead and harmony vocals. On the master take, the final verse has John singing an excerpt from the poem Remember, Remember The Fifth of November, followed by an explosion. This is a reference to the U.K. holiday Guy Fawkes Night, which you can read about here. Afterwards, John said in an interview that this section of the song was actually part of a lengthy ad-lib that he decided should be edited for use as an ending to the song. The version I present here, from these sessions, was recorded before that decision, when an ending had not been established. That is apparently the reason that this take has John continuing through the song a second time before it finally breaks down. Although no harmony vocals are present on this take, you may note how John’s vocal is much clearer in comparison with the Phil Spector produced master version. For me, this is a big plus. Also, judging by John’s commentary at the end of the track, George Harrison must have walked into the room after it was completed.

On a final note, I would once again like to thank Beatle Ed, from Fab 4 Radio for turning me (and now you) on to this particular take of Remember. Thanks for reading…

John Lennon, circa 1970

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? If so, I will do my best to deliver, so let me hear from you. To browse for ideas, check out this search-able listing of thousands of Beatle-related recordings to choose from. Then let me hear from you here.

Here are some Amazon links to read more on, or purchase, some music related to this post:

1) Plastic Ono Band – 2010 remaster of original 1970 album, featuring remastered original version of Remember

2) Anthology – 1998 4-CD compilation of many John Lennon out-takes including one of Remember not heard here or anywhere else

3) Lennon – Signature Box – 11 CD box set of 2010 remasters of all core John Lennon albums. Includes home demo and original version of Remember

4) Gimme Some Truth – 2010 remasters themed 4-CD compilation of John Lennon’s best, including original version of Remember

5) More Amazon links for any of your favorite Beatles-related music: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

Related posts:

1. Beatles Rarity Of The Week – “Laugh” (Plastic Ono People out-take, 1969) This week’s BROW is available as a podcast. This one...
2. Blue Suede Shoes – John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, live in ’69 It was promoter John Brower’s lucky day on September 12th,...
3. Beatles Rarity Of The Week – How Do You Sleep (take 4) Welcome to BROW. There was still a bit of a...

TheBeatlesRarity.com marches forward with your first BROW for the month of May. In June 1973, right about the time John Lennon was ready to go into the studio to record his next album, Mind Games, he separated from Yoko Ono for a period of 18 months that was later referred to as his “lost weekend”. Leaving his recording plans undeterred by the split, he arranged for sessions at New York’s Record Plant through August 1973 and put together his newest incarnation of The Plastic Ono Band (now termed The Plastic U.F. Ono Band). He even decided to handle the production of the album himself (i.e. without Phil Spector, who had been John’s primary producer for previous releases). Guitarist David Spinozza was recruited to play in the band and was worried that if John found out he had also played recently with Paul McCartney (on the Ram sessions) that, due to the recent feuding between the two, he would be fired. Upon learning about it, John’s only comment was that McCartney knows how to pick good people. Also in the band was John’s old friend, drummer Jim Keltner, along with Gordon Edwards on bass and Ken Ascher on piano. John also enlisted the help of a group of backing vocalists known as Something Different. John designed the cover art for Mind Games himself. It shows a picture of himself walking through an empty field and in the background is a high mountain which doubles as a horizontal profile of Yoko’s face. John later said the design represented his walking away from Yoko and her mountainous influence on him.

Mind Games cover art, 1973

Many of the songs on the Mind Games LP are directed at Yoko, including this weeks BROW. Unlike the finalized account of Out The Blue, this alternate take is a more ‘bare bones’ version. It does not include the prominent backing vocals of Something Different, nor does it have the pedal steel guitar heard on the master (credited on the album simply to ‘Sneaky Pete’). John’s final chorus, where he sings Like a U.F.O. you came to me, is repeated twice in this version, along with the preceding piano break. This adds nearly an extra minute to the song. Although John is only singing a guide vocal here, to my ears, his voice comes through quite nicely. Enjoy…

John Lennon, circa 1973

Here are some Amazon links to read more on, or purchase, some music related to this post:

1) Mind Games – 2010 CD remaster of original Mind Games LP featuring Out The Blue and bonus tracks.

2) Gimme Some Truth – 4 CD themed box set of selected John Lennon favorites all remastered in 2010. Featuring Out The Blue and all the John Lennon solo hits.

3) More Amazon links for any of your favorite Beatles-related music: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

Related posts:

1. Backmasking – a ‘Meat City’ example Backmasking (also known as backward masking) is a recording technique...
2. Beatles Rarity Of The Week – Say It Again/You Are Here demo Welcome to this week’s Beatles Rarity Of The Week. Not...
3. Beatles Rarity Of The Week – “Laugh” (Plastic Ono People out-take, 1969) This week’s BROW is available as a podcast. This one...

Welcome to the Beatles Rarity of the Week. On January 22, 1971, John Lennon gave an interview to Tariq Ali, editor of the underground UK magazine Red Mole, and his assistant Robin Blackburn. The interview touched on John’s seemingly radical political views and how they were surfacing in his recent music. A detailed discussion of the content would go beyond the scope of this post, however, you can read a transcription of it in it’s entirety here. Inspired by the interview and as a nod to Tariq, who himself was considered to be somewhat of a “revolutionary”, John wrote and recorded his next single, Power To The People, in his new studio, located at his Tittenhurst estate home. It was his latest political slogan put to music. In John’s own words, it was another quickie, done at Ascot. As fans of John know, he is often very critical of his own work, and in the case of this song, he called it “rather embarrassing” in his writings, years later, included in his book Skywriting By Word Of Mouth. He also states that the song “didn’t really come off”. Despite his comments, it’s success on the charts (#6 Melody Maker UK, #11 Billboard US), show that it came off good enough in the eyes of the public. John was backed by his Plastic Ono Band again, which included Billy Preston on keyboards, Klaus Voormann on bass, Alan White on drums (however some sources credit drums to Jim Gordon) and Bobby Keys on all of that saxophone. John plays guitar and piano on the track and shares the production credit with Yoko Ono and Phil Spector. Heavily echoed handclaps resembling the sound of marching feet over a Power To The People chant in the chorus give the song a militant vibe and the background vocals were reportedly supplied by 45 singers, one of which was the late Apple artist Doris Troy. However, in this out-take version, provided as this week’s BROW, those backing vocals are not present, and we get to hear John sing it on his own. Enjoy…

John Lennon & Yoko Ono, 1971

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? If so, I will do my best to deliver, so let me hear from you. To browse for ideas, check out this search-able listing of thousands of Beatle-related recordings to choose from. Then let me hear from you here.

Here are some Amazon links to read more on, or purchase, some music related to this post:

1) Power To The People: The Hits – John Lennon hits compilation featuring 2010 remastered Power To The People and 14 other John Lennon classics

2) Power To The People: The Hits – John Lennon hits compilation featuring 2010 remastered Power To The People and 14 other John Lennon classics plus a bonus music video collection DVD

3) More Amazon links for any of your favorite Beatles-related music: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

Related posts:

1. Beatles Rarity Of The Week – “Laugh” (Plastic Ono People out-take, 1969) This week’s BROW is available as a podcast. This one...
2. John Lennon solo remasters to be released in October 2010 Eight digitally remastered solo albums by John Lennon are to...
3. Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) – 1970 promo Instant Karma! was John Lennon’s third US/UK single following Give...

Instant Karma! was John Lennon’s third US/UK single following Give Peace A Chance and Cold Turkey and was released in February 1970, which was still a couple months before The Beatles were disbanded officially. John had Phil Spector produce the record and this could have been a way of trying him out prior to giving him the project of re-working the Let It Be album for release the following May. One of the amazing things about this song is that John wrote it, and had it recorded all on the same day (which was Jan. 26, 1970). It was then released and in the shops only 10 days later. It has gone down in history as one of the fastest released songs. John’s Plastic Ono Band back-up included Billy Preston (organ), George Harrison (guitar – although he is not shown in the video), Klaus Voormann (bass), Mal Evans (claps & chimes) and Alan White (drums).

Click the image above to play the video.

Click to read about or purchase these related items from Amazon.com that that feature Instant Karma! by John Lennon:

1) Power To The People: The Hits – hits compilation featuring Instant Karma!

2) Gimme Some Truth – 4-disc themed hits compilation featuring Instant Karma!

3) Lennon Legend – The Very Best of John Lennon – featuring the Instant Karma! promo video shown here

4) The U.S. vs. John Lennon – motion picture of John Lennon’s battle with U.S. Immigration in the early-mid 1970′s.

…and here’s more Amazon links for your favorite Beatles-related music: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

Related posts:

1. Beatles Rarity Of The Week – “Laugh” (Plastic Ono People out-take, 1969) This week’s BROW is available as a podcast. This one...
2. Beatles Rarity Of The Week – You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) (original length) Welcome to this week’s BROW. You Know My Name (Look...

Welcome to this week’s Beatles Rarity Of The Week.

Not a whole lot is known about this acoustic home demo of John Lennon’s that I’m throwing on for the BROW this week. It’s called Say It Again and for those of you familiar with John’s 1973 Mind Games album, you may recognize elements of the song You Are Here in this recording. In 1971, John produced an album called The Pope Smokes Dope for Apple artist and early New York punker David Peel (with the Lower East Side Band). I bring this up because this demo was supposedly found on a cassette tape labeled ‘rehearsal with David Peel’ and even though this is only John, it is possible that John jammed with David during the sessions for his album. After all, David had played with the Plastic Ono Band on a couple of other occasions. It’d be nice to confirm the rumor of this tape’s existence and investigate the possibility of other gems, yet to be discovered. In any event, based on what info I was able to gather, this obscurity was likely taped in the fall of 1971.

Extra-special thanks go out to Lennonista this week for suggesting this track for BROW. It was a fab request in my book, and, of course, I hope you agree. For the rest of you that have sent me requests, I haven’t forgotten them and will do my best to get them out soon.

John Lennon, circa 1971

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

No related posts.

Welcome to this week’s BROW. You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) is a comical 5-part experiment John Lennon and Paul McCartney put together that resembles the craziness heard on their Christmas flexi-disc messages to their fan club. It had actually been recorded over a few years, mainly in May and June of 1967 and April of 1969, but not revealed to the public until it appeared as the B-side of The Beatles Let It Be single in March of 1970. As The Beatles were finished recording together by this time, it was almost released as a single by John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band, but that idea was aborted after John instead came up with a replacement called Instant Karma! (We All Shine On). It never appeared on an album/CD until the Past Masters CD collection surfaced in 1988.

When initially released, there was a few edits applied to shorten it. The first and fourth sections were shortened and the second part containing the ‘ska beat’ was completely omitted. The third section (which I call “Slaggers” after John’s line welcome to Slaggers!) was left complete, and the fifth section, which happens to include Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones on sax, also remained intact.

The Beatles Anthology 2 (disc 2) CD set gives us another mix of the song, revealing what was left off of the first 2 parts, however a full half-minute of the fourth part, that appeared on the original single, was edited out and the ending was also cut short.

What you are listening to here is a forgery. I have combined these two mixes for the sake of getting a complete account of this song. Since the original mix is only available in mono and the Anthology mix is only available as a stereo remix, it was first necessary to create a mono mix by averaging the channels in the Anthology stereo mix and then editing in the omitted pieces from the original mix. Through this reconstruction, we hear how it sounded before it was edited a full two minutes shorter for the Let It Be single. A trained ear may be able to spot where I made my edits but I think I got it fairly close. Sometimes for history to have an accurate completeness, it needs to be pieced back together. Ask any archeologist. Enjoy…

My personal copy of the Let It Be/You Know My Name picture sleeve

An aside: The sleeve pictured above accurately displays the song title as You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) however, on the actual record label it is printed as You Know My Name (Look Up My Number)

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

No related posts.

Welcome to BROW. There was still a bit of a feud going on in 1971 between Paul McCartney and the other three Beatles over legal matters with Apple and the “big breakup”. In May of that year, Paul released his Ram LP and some of the lyrics to three of the songs on the album, Too Many People, Dear Boy and Three Legs, caught the attention of John Lennon and he interpreted some slightly indiscreet “digs” at him in the songs. In reply, John (being John) took a more blunt approach and penned what he termed “the nasty one” for his upcoming Imagine album titled How Do You Sleep. Not only do this track’s lyrics contain a series of “digs” directed at Paul, but to sprinkle a little extra salt in the wound, George Harrison puts his stamp of approval on the song by contributing slide guitar. Klaus Voormann, a Beatles friend from way back in the Hamburg gig days of 1960, plays bass. He also has played on other Plastic Ono Band releases with John and he also drew the cover art seen on the Beatles Revolver LP of 1966. I will not go into explaining the specific “digs” in any of these songs, but for How Do You Sleep it is quite easy to pick them out if you are not familiar with them already and are also familiar with Paul’s material with The Beatles and immediately afterward. It might even be fun to see how many you can find. This particular recording of the song is take 4, which is much longer than the official version from Imagine, partly because John repeats the first verse at the end. Lennon also included a postcard in the Imagine LP packaging (pictured here) that showed a parody of the Ram LP cover. In Paul’s next album (which was the first Wings album, called Wings Wild Life), he responds to How Do You Sleep with a song written lyrically in the form of a letter called Dear Friend.

John Lennon, 1971

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

Related posts:

1. John Lennon’s Imagine (limited 40th anniversary “Black Friday” package) Apple Records will release John Lennon’s Imagine album in a...

This week’s BROW is available as a podcast.

This one ought to be good for a chuckle. First the background information:

Back in 1969 as The Beatles were falling apart, John came up with his Plastic Ono Band concept. The basic idea was that the Plastic Ono Band was defined as whomever he (or Yoko Ono) happened to be playing with at the time. It could be a bunch of people in a Canadian hotel room (“Give Peace A Chance”, June 1969) or Eric Clapton and Klaus Voormann (Live Peace in Toronto album, Dec. 1969).

This weeks BROW is a recording that was originally over 30 minutes long and was cut down to around 4 minutes with plans to be released as the third Plastic Ono single in December 1969. For variation it was to be accredited to The Plastic Ono People who actually consisted of John with Mal Evans, Anthony Fawcett, Geoff Emerick, Phil McDonald, Malcolm Davies, Eddie Klein and others. The release was scrapped later when John decided to record and release “Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)” instead, the following month.

My apologies for the little bit of vinyl crackle you’ll hear in this but it’s in my only surviving source recording. So listen and enjoy. You might even want to join in.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1969

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

Related posts:

1. Blue Suede Shoes – John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, live in ’69 It was promoter John Brower’s lucky day on September 12th,...
2. Beatles Rarity Of The Week – Power To The People (out-take version) Welcome to the Beatles Rarity of the Week. On January...
3. Beatles Rarity Of The Week – How Do You Sleep (take 4) Welcome to BROW. There was still a bit of a...