{"id":1759,"date":"2025-10-14T15:34:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T15:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/1759\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T15:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T15:34:09","slug":"john-lennon-and-yoko-ono-power-to-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/1759\/","title":{"rendered":"John Lennon and Yoko Ono ‘Power to the People’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPower to the People is a portrait of John and Yoko as a young married couple splashing down in New York City, making friends with the local radicals and con men and boho scenesters. In October 1971, John Lennon<\/a> is turning 31, coming off his first post-Beatles success with Plastic Ono Band, about to hit Number One with his brand new Imagine. But he and Yoko Ono<\/a> feel bored in their lavish English country mansion Tittenhurst Park, even after building a studio and cutting most of Imagine there. As he shrugs, \u201cWe didn\u2019t like being Lord and Lady of the Manor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo John and Yoko pop over to New York and get a tiny apartment in the West Village. They thrive on the city\u2019s electric energy, with neighbors like Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg. They start wearing berets, to show that they\u2019re now militant revolutionaries. They get their counterculture tickets punched by every two-bit hippie hustler in town. They\u2019re leaving home; they\u2019re having fun. They never go back. \u201cGoing back to England is like going to Denmark,\u201d John complains. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t want to live in Denmark!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPower to the People gathers the music they made in their New York radical days, in a giant box set with their son Sean Ono Lennon as producer and creative director \u2014 nine CDs, 3 Blu-Rays, with a 204-page book. It follows two superb deluxe boxes devoted to Imagine <\/a>and Mind Games<\/a>, but this package has a trickier task: salvaging the dodgy 1972 album Sometime in New York City. In a clever strategic move, it downplays the album to focus on live material, outtakes, acoustic home demos, for a documentary of the busy hippie energy swirling around the couple during this brief interlude in their lives. Like the excellent 2024 doc One to One, it captures John and Yoko falling in love with their new city.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was an exciting time for these two. They played every progressive benefit they could. Most crucially, they played the \u201cOne to One\u201d charity concerts in August 1972, at Madison Square Garden, to benefit special needs children. Those turned out to be the only two full-length live shows that John ever played after the Beatles, as well as the last two he ever did with Yoko \u2014 both included in this box.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tThey also celebrated their new move by dashing into the studio to bang out a quickie album of protest tunes, commenting on the latest news headlines, plus one actual good song, \u201cNew York City.\u201d The album was Some Time in New York City on the cover, but Sometime in New York City on the label, their liner notes, and their letters, a hint of how slapdash the whole project was. They hooked up with a greasy bar band called Elephant\u2019s Memory, though smartly recruiting their pal Jim Keltner on drums, crediting the whole thing to \u201cJohn & Yoko\/Plastic Ono Band with Elephant\u2019s Memory Plus Invisible Strings.\u201d The cover declared \u201cOno News That\u2019s Fit to Print.\u201d It also had producer Phil Spector\u2019s face and the caption \u201cTo Know Him Is To Love Him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAlas, as 1970s ex-Beatle albums go, Sometime ranks with George\u2019s Dark Horse, Wings\u2019 Wild Life, and Ringo\u2019s Bad Boy at the bottom of the barrel. John and Yoko sing about their new celebrity-radical buddies, marijuana laws, prison conditions (\u201cAttica State, Attica State, we\u2019re all mates with Attica State\u201d), the Troubles in Northern Ireland (\u201cyou Anglo pigs!\u201d), with sentimental slogans and half-assed music. The most fun songs are the awesomely terrible ones, like the Monty Python-worthy \u201cLuck of the Irish,\u201d where Yoko concludes, \u201cThe world would be one big Blarney Stone!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNew York City\u201d is the one that always jumped out from Sometime, shining like the top of the Chrysler Building, with a trashy Chuck Berry guitar riff and a chorus hook en espa\u00f1ol, as John yells, \u201cQue pasa, New York!\u201d He toasts the Big Apple from the Apollo Theater to Max\u2019s Kansas City to the Statue of Liberty, with a high-speed excitement not far from those local kids in the New York Dolls. But it\u2019s also the album\u2019s most politically credible moment, celebrating the multi-cultural New York immigrant dream. John keeps cheering \u201cWhat a bad-ass city,\u201d flipping off the Feds trying to deport him. Was this the NYC song Mick Jagger was aiming to top with the Stones\u2019 \u201cShattered\u201d? If so, well played, since these are two of the kickiest songs either John or Mick came up with in the Seventies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tThe box has nearly all their songs from this period, with a glaring exception \u2014 the single \u201cWoman is the N***** of the World,\u201d which doesn\u2019t fit into any of the nine discs. It was Ono\u2019s unfortunate title for a confrontational feminist message, though she could have gotten a better title out of the key line, \u201cWoman is the slave to the slaves.\u201d It\u2019s the only moment on Sometime where Lennon faces up to his complicity as part of the oppression, since everyday misogyny was part of his life in ways that \u201cAttica State\u201d and \u201cJohn Sinclair\u201d weren\u2019t. The song meant enough to them to lead off the album, with its lyrics front and center on the cover. But the song and its message get erased here. (The censorship might be easier to lament if the song had anything going on musically.)<\/p>\n

\n\tPower to the People wisely focuses on the excellent \u201cOne to One\u201d concerts \u2014 they\u2019re the heart of this box. You can hear that John is terrified, with a nervous gum-snapping edge in his voice that suits tough tales like \u201cIt\u2019s So Hard\u201d and \u201cWell Well Well.\u201d You can also hear that the back-up sweathogs in Elephant\u2019s Memory sincerely believe they\u2019re qualified for this gig, with no qualms about showing off. (Hilariously diplomatic comment from Sean Ono Lennon in the liner notes: \u201cLet\u2019s just say, if I was in a band with John Lennon, I wouldn\u2019t solo over his voice when he\u2019s singing.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a great live \u201cHound Dog,\u201d enhanced by Yoko\u2019s canine howls and John spluttering \u201cElvis, I love ya!\u201d in the final verse. \u201cThis is what you call an encore,\u201d he tells the crowd. \u201c\u2018Cause we\u2019ve done enough. You gotta be the encore too!\u201d That leads into \u201cGive Peace a Chance,\u201d with Stevie Wonder singing along. John also wails a powerhouse version of \u201cMother.\u201d \u201cMy father singing \u2018Mother\u2019 is my personal highlight from the show,\u201d Sean remarks. \u201cWatching and hearing it may require some tissues and possibly a blanket and\/or a bottle of whiskey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an early outtake of \u201cNew York City,\u201d John rails against \u201cthat clean, clean, fuckin\u2019 recorded sound which I hate.\u201d There\u2019s little of that cleanliness here. The new remixes include longer versions of \u201cSunday Bloody Sunday\u201d and \u201cJohn Sinclair.\u201d There\u2019s a disc of raw studio jams on Fifties rock & roll oldies like \u201cHoney Don\u2019t,\u201d \u201cYakety Yak,\u201d and \u201cAin\u2019t That a Shame.\u201d They rough it up at political rallies and TV chat-shows. There\u2019s the \u201cLive Jam\u201d material that stretched the original Sometime into a pricey double\u2014getting noisy at the Fillmore with Frank Zappa\u2019s Mothers, recruiting friends in 1969 (Eric Clapton, Keith Moon, good old George Harrison) for a 16-minute feedback jam on \u201cDon\u2019t Worry Kyoko.\u201d There\u2019s also a bizarro reggae version of \u201cGive Peace a Chance\u201d featuring none other than Jerry Lewis, from his Labor Day MDA Telethon. Jerry sings along, while introducing the couple as \u201ctwo of the most unusual people in the whole of the world\u2014and I don\u2019t just mean the world of entertainment!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe studio banter is full of humor that doesn\u2019t necessarily show up on the finished album, like when Yoko begins \u201cBorn in a Prison\u201d with the words, \u201cI\u2019m going to be singing either in Liza Minnelli style or Yoko Ono style.\u201d After \u201cSunday Bloody Sunday,\u201d John quips, \u201cSorry Paul, it\u2019s all over now,\u201d since even he realizes that he\u2019s failed to meet the not-terribly-lofty standard of Wings\u2019 \u201cGive Ireland Back to the Irish.\u201d (Macca\u2019s song about the infamous Bloody Sunday massacre might have been clumsy, but at least he wasn\u2019t singing, \u201cIt\u2019s those mothers\u2019 time to burn!\u201d Let\u2019s just say the bar was pretty low for Bono.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThe final disc is pure joy: John alone with his guitar, in previously unreleased 1971 hotel tapes. He drifts away into beautifully fragile solo reveries on Fifties rock & roll tunes from his idols like Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley, with witty romps through \u201cHi-Heel Sneakers\u201d and \u201cSlippin\u2019 and Slidin\u2019.\u201d There\u2019s also previously unheard acoustic demos of originals like the poetically poignant ballad \u201cWhen the Teacher,\u201d cut in an Ann Arbor hotel room in December 1971. He also teams up with protest singer Phil Ochs, playing back-up guitar as Ochs sings familiar standards like \u201cI Ain\u2019t Marching Anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe book is fun, too, packed with memorabilia. The highlight: John\u2019s angry letter to the president of Capitol Records, complaining that the album cover has a sticker covering the (faked) photo of Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao dancing naked. He rages, \u201cI\u2019m really sick and tired of fighting E.M.I.\/Capitol\u2014who over the years have fucked up some of my\/our most radical, and effective covers\u2014including the now rare and expensive \u2014 Beatle meat \u2019n\u2019 babies picture \u2014 not to mention \u2018Two Virgins\u2019 (another classic!)\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tJohn and Yoko shied away from making any personal statements in their protest period \u2014 there\u2019s nothing like \u201cOh My Love\u201d or \u201cOh Yoko!\u201d here. But there\u2019s good reason for that \u2014 their marriage was already headed for the rocks. On Election Night 1972, they went to Jerry Rubin\u2019s place to watch the results as Nixon won 49 states; Lennon got drunk and went into the next room to have sex with another woman while Ono just sat there. (She turned the experience into her song \u201cDeath of Samantha.\u201d) Their romantic and radical ideals collapsed together. Less than a year after releasing Sometime in New York City, the couple separated. John jetted off to L.A. for his Lost Weekend \u2014 guzzling his weight in Brandy Alexanders, getting thrown out of bars with Harry Nilsson, jamming with Paul and Elton, making the scene with his groovy new muse May Pang.<\/p>\n

\n\tPower to the People might give you some fresh new perspective on the couple\u2019s protest songs, but it wisely doesn\u2019t try to make the case for Sometime in New York City as the under-appreciated classic it isn\u2019t. Instead, it frames these songs in the context of a short-lived but creative interlude in the tangled lives of two complex artists. Before the Lost Weekend, John and Yoko had their New York Year \u2014 turning their personal confusions into beautifully vivid moments of rage and pain.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Power to the People is a portrait of John and Yoko as a young married couple splashing down…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2298,9,24,55,54,56,2299],"class_list":{"0":"post-1759","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-john-lennon","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-city-news","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-yoko-ono"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}