As teased in recent social media posts, details have been announced about a suite of new releases titled Power to the People that will showcase John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s historic 1972 One to One concerts at Madison Square Garden.
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The Power to the People collections, which will be available in various configurations formats and formats, will be released on October 10, two days after what would’ve been Lennon’s 85th birthday.
The most expansive and impressive of the Power to the People releases is a 12-disc Super Deluxe Edition box set. The box set delves deeply into the music Lennon and Ono made during their early years in New York City and focuses on the couple’s political activism. Across nine CDs and three Bluy-ray discs, the collection includes remastered audio of both One to One concerts, a new version of John and Yoko’s 1972 album Sometime in New York City, and a treasure trove of wealth of rare demos, home recordings, jam sessions, live performances, and unique mixes.
Packaged with the recordings will be a 204-page book, and various pieces of replica memorabilia. Among the latter are postcards, sticker sheets, a poster, concert tickets, and a backstage pass.
Power to the People was produced by John and Yoko’s son, Sean Ono Lennon, along with his team of studio collaborators that previously has worked on his parents’ various “Ultimate Mixes” reissues.
Less-expansive versions Power to the People also will be released featuring just recordings from the One to One concerts. They include four-LP and two-CD sets featuring all 31 performances from both shows, and two-LP and single-CD collections boasting 17 highlights culled from the two concerts.
Sean Lennon’s Comments About the Power to the People Collection
Sean Lennon discussed his experience working on the Power to the People releases in a statement included in the press release announcing the project.
“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 said. “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.”
Sean noted that the One to One performance “had a legendary status in my mind, because it was my dad’s last concert.”
He added, “For the concerts, [studio collaborators] 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 think in the end, the shows sound better than ever.”
More About the One to One Concerts
The One to One concerts took place on August 30, 1972, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Lennon and Ono were inspired to organize the shows after watching a TV exposé by news reporter Geraldo Rivera focused on the awful conditions and questionable medical care endured by mentally and physically handicapped children at the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York, a state-supported institution.
One evening concert was initially scheduled, and a matinee performance was added after the first announced show sold out.
John and Yoko were backed at the concerts by members of their Plastic Ono Band and the New York City-based rock group Elephant’s Memory. The shows, which were attended by a total of 40,000 people, raised more than $1.5 million for schoolchildren with disabilities.
The One to One shows were the only full-length concerts Lennon ever played after leaving The Beatles.
As a preview of the Power to the People releases, a restored video of Lennon and company performing the Beatles classic “Come Together” at the evening One to One concert has debuted on John’s YouTube channel.
More About the Power to the People Box Set
The Power to the People Super Deluxe box set features audio of both One to One concerts, and the 17-track hybrid highlights album.
The collection also includes a remixed and reconfigured version of Lennon and Ono’s 1972 album Sometime in New York City. Retitled New York City, the tracks have been stripped of the original mixes’ heavy production and appear in a new running order. The album also features extended versions of “John Sinclair” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”
Sometime in New York City featured a studio disc with tracks Lennon and Ono recorded in New York with Elephant’s Memory and drummer Jim Keltner, and a live disc dubbed Live Jam that boasted performances recorded at separate events in 1969 and 1971.
The Live Jam recordings appear on a separate disc in the box set apart from the New York City album. They include performances from a December 1969 UNICEF benefit concert in London, and from a June 1971 show by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in New York City featuring Lennon and Ono sitting in.
The New York City album also includes a disc subtitled “Studio Jam.” It features Lennon, Ono, and Elephant’s Memory jamming on a variety of classic rock ‘n’ roll tunes, including “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Honey, Don’t,” “Ain’t That a Shame,” “Don’t Be Cruel, and “Whole Lotta Shakin’.”
The box set also features discs with “Evolution Documentary” and select “Elements” mixes of Sometime in New York City studio tracks. The “Evolution Documentary” mixes are audio montages incorporating segments of demos, rehearsal recordings, studio chatter, outtakes, and more that present how each song evolved from demo to final master. “Elements” mixes of four Sometime in New York City songs isolate the orchestral arrangements of those tracks to present them with deeper sonic detail and clarity.
About the Box Set’s Various Other Live and Home Recordings and Jams
The super deluxe box set also features recordings John and Yoko performing with the Plastic Ono Band at a December 1971 rally for imprisoned activist John Sinclair in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They were joined at the event by Greenwich Village protest singer David Peel and his group The Lower East Side.
In addition, it includes performances from a December 1971 benefit concert at the Apollo Theater in New York that raised money for families of victims of the then-recent Attica state prison riots.
Also features are performances on a 1971 episode of the David Frost Show and the 1972 Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon.
Rounding out the box set are 1971 home recordings of Lennon at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City and the Campus Inn in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Some of the latter recordings also feature folk singer Phil Ochs.
Visit JohnLennon.com for full details of the Power to the People releases, which can be pre-ordered now.
(Photo by Michael Negrin/©Yoko Ono Lennon)
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