Category: Things That Are British

This is pretty fucking cool.

New & exclusive 2018 Raw Studio Mix video with never-before-seen footage.
The IMAGINE Raw Studio Mixes place you in the centre of Ascot Sound Studios with John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band all around you. No reverb or echo, no effects, no strings, just live, unvarnished and raw. Available in stereo and exclusively in 5.1 Surround Sound in The Ultimate Collection Box Set.

Imagine you are at the Lennon’s home, Tittenhurst Park in Ascot, England. It’s night. It’s the last week in May in 1971 and you are their special guest, sat in a chair in the very center of the their recording studio, Ascot Sound Studios. John Lennon is sat in front of you, teaching the musicians one of his latest compositions. He is talking and singing and playing the same wood-finish Epiphone Casino electric guitar he played on ‘Revolution’. A bearded George Harrison is in front of you, to the right, playing electric slide on John’s pale blue Fender Strat. Just behind you and to your right, Rod Lynton with Ted Turner from Wishbone Ash are strumming chords on twelve string acoustic guitars, and directly behind you to the right, John and George’s old friend Klaus Voormann is playing his deep hand-painted Fender Precision bass. Behind you to the left, Alan White (who would later join Yes) is playing his Ludwig silver sparkle drumkit, and in front of you to the left, John Tout from Renaissance is playing chords on the Steinway upright piano, and to his right, Nicky Hopkins is improvising on the red-top Wurlitzer Electric Piano, literally days before he leaves for Nellcôte to play on Exile on Main Street with The Rolling Stones. You are listening to the band playing ‘How Do You Sleep’ and all the hairs are standing up on your arms.

For the Raw Studio Mix of ‘How Do You Sleep?’ (Takes 5 & 6) In the Imagine Ultimate Collection Box Set on Blu-Ray Audio Disc 2, the 5.1 Surround Sound positions are:
Front Centre – John Lennon: electric guitar, vocal
Front Left – Nicky Hopkins: electric piano
Front Right – George Harrison: electric slide guitar
Surround Left – Alan White: drums
Surround Right – Klaus Voormann: bass

About ‘How Do You Sleep?’ by John & Yoko
excerpted from the 120 page book in the Imagine Ultimate Collection Box Set

John: Somebody said the other day ‘It’s about me’. You know, there’s two things I regret. One is that there was so much talk about Paul on it, they missed the song. It was a good track. And I should’ve kept me mouth shut – not on the song, it could’ve been about anybody, you know? And when you look at them back, Dylan said it about his stuff, you know, most of it’s about him. The only thing that matters is how he and I feel about those things and not what the writer or the commentator thinks about it, you know? Him and me are OK. So I don’t care what they say about that, you know? I’ve always been a little, you know, loose. And I hope it’ll change because I’m fed up of waking up in the papers. But if it doesn’t, my friends are my friends whatever way.