Imagine [VINYL]

Product Information

Track C7 is listed incorrectly as "I Don't Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don't Wanna Die (Take 25)" on the hype sticker, but correctly as Take 11 on the inner sleeve. The tracks that were finished at Record Plant were "It's So Hard", "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier" and "How Do You Sleep? I don't have anything to compare this to, but I think this is a nice sounding pressing, good warm soundstage on dead quiet vinyl. Before the strings and the saxophone, before the brilliant application of sound shaping techniques that were used to produce the iconic album, there were the original, unadorned performances that were the foundation of the Imagine album.

It feels like the sound is not very voluminous, but in general for the 1990 edition it is quite good. I have a copy but the inner is a transparent poly sleeve with "Important Notice" EMI text - does this mean the printer inner is missing or that its release just never had one? Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono flew to New York on 3 July to continue sessions for the album the next day, at the Record Plant. She knew the initial basic track performances that spawned the album were as aggressively visceral and emotionally touching, if not more so, than the ones that made up John’s Plastic Ono Band album, if such a thing is possible.Writing for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine finds the lyrics to be "only marginally less confessional" than on Lennon's previous album, adding: "If Imagine doesn't have the thematic sweep of Plastic Ono Band, it is nevertheless a remarkable collection of songs that Lennon would never be able to better again. Lennon later expressed his displeasure with the more commercial sound of the album, saying that the title track was "an anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic song, but because it's sugar-coated, it's accepted".

This made the album easier to remix with greater sonic clarity, because we had so much more individual control over each track. Alan Smith of the NME lauded the album as "superb", "beautiful" and "one step away from the chill of his recent total self-revelation, and yet a giant leap towards commerciality without compromise". In 2012, Imagine ranked at number 80 on Rolling Stone 's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Lennon chose to remake "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier" on 24 May 1971, [3] the opening day of the main album sessions. In Japan, the quad mix was issued on LP using the QS Regular Matrix system; and also, a discrete quad reel-to-reel tape.Extensive footage from the sessions was recorded for a scrapped documentary; parts were released on the documentary film Imagine: John Lennon (1988). Derided by critics as "the most expensive home movie of all time", [ citation needed] it premiered to an American audience on TV on 23 December 1972.

Any echo or effects that are heard were recorded onto spare tracks on the multitrack tapes during the sessions and so are exactly what the musicians would have heard in their headphones on the day of recording. Stripped down, the songs and performances are put into sharp focus: Listening to ‘Gimme Some Truth’ with no slap echo on the voice, you can feel the froth coming out of John’s mouth. You will hear some ideas being tried out and then abandoned – for example, the instrumentation on ‘Imagine’; the challenges posed by some of John’s quirky rhythms, as during the session for ‘How? We discovered many moments that, although not long enough to be bonus tracks by themselves, when blended together would help tell the story of each song. In the new Ultimate Remixes, the strings are mixed in surround sound or in stereo – which also helps retain the focus on John.Reviewing the album for Rolling Stone in 1971, Ben Gerson said it "contains a substantial portion of good music" but considered Lennon's previous LP to be superior.