New Box Set Chronicles John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Musical Activism
The massive 12-disc set ‘Power To The People (Super Deluxe Edition)’ features 90 previously unreleased tracks.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s history of political activism is extensive, and a new box set chronicling that element of the couple’s partnership is fittingly massive. Due out Oct. 10, Power To The People (Super Deluxe Edition) spans 123 songs over 12 discs — nine CDs and three Blu-Rays — including 90 previously unreleased or never-before-heard tracks. A 204-page hardback book designed and edited by Simon Hilton, featuring an oral history about all the included music, rounds out the spectacular package.
The team led by Lennon and Ono’s son Sean Ono Lennon, who won this year’s Grammy for Best Boxed Set Or Special Limited Edition Package for their work on John Lennon’s Mind Games – The Ultimate Collection (Super Deluxe Edition), swung back into action for Power To The People (Super Deluxe Edition). In addition to a treasure trove of demos, home recordings, jam sessions, live cuts, and alternate mixes, the project includes material such as Plastic Ono Band’s “Give Peace A Chance,” the 1969 anti-war anthem long associated with Lennon and Ono’s “Bed-In,” and a new version of the group’s 1972 album Sometime In New York City, recorded after their galvanizing move to Greenwich Village.
Also on the tracklist: a recording of 1972’s’s One To One Concerts at Madison Square Garden, Lennon’s only full-length concerts after leaving the Beatles. The landmark shows doubled as the last concerts John and Yoko ever performed together. In the aftermath, Lennon told NME it was the most fun he’d had playing live music since the Beatles’ raucous early shows in England and Germany.
In the preface to Power To The People, Ono writes, “The One To One concert was our effort in Grassroots Politics. It embodied what John and I strongly believed in – Rock for Peace and Enlightenment. And this one in Madison Square Garden turned out to be the last concert John and I did together. Imagine Peace. Peace is Power. Power To The People!”
For Sean Ono Lennon, assembling this sprawling project was a labor of love. “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,” he says. “People may not realize 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.”
Ono Lennon adds, “For the concerts, Paul Hicks and Simon Hilton and I 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 and Sam Gannon did 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.”
Shop the Power To The People (Super Deluxe Edition) box set here.
