John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ Album to Get Six-Disc Boxed Set Treament
By Variety Staff
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – On October 5, Geffen/UMe will release “John Lennon: Imagine: The Ultimate Box Set,” just ahead of what would have been the late musician’s 78th birthday on October 9. The remixed and remastered six-disc/140-track collection is fully authorized by Yoko Ono Lennon who oversaw the production and creative direction.
Spread across four CDs and two Blu-ray discs, this expanded edition of what many feel is the former Beatle’s best solo album includes new “Ultimate Mixes” of the iconic album — which, according to the announcement, reveal “whole new levels of sonic depth, definition and clarity to these timeless songs” — as well as unadorned Raw Studio Mixes, 5.1 surround sound mixes, and for the first time in nearly 50 years, a “Quadrasonic Album Mix,” presenting the original four-speaker “quadrophonic” mix in a format that was briefly popular with audiophiles in the 1970s. The set also includes rare outtakes, isolated track elements and “The Evolution Documentary,” a track-by-track audio montage that details the journey of each song from demo to master recording via instructions, rehearsals, recordings, multitrack exploration and studio chatter.
The title track’s universally appealing lyrics were inspired by Yoko’s “event scores” in her 1964 book Grapefruit, and she was officially co-credited as a writer on the track in June 2017.
In addition to the album reissue, the film’s “Imagine” and “Gimme Some Truth” will be re-released in October in remastered HD with new, unreleased content and Thames & Hudson are publishing the book “Imagine John Yoko” on October 9. Compiled and curated by Ono recaps the making of the legendary album: the locations, the creative team, the artworks, and the films, in the words of John & Yoko and other participants.
Earlier this week it was announced that Lennon and Ono’s film “Imagine” — essentially home movies made around the time of the album’s sessions, and not to be confused with the 1988 Lennon documentary of the same name — will return to theaters next month with bonus footage.
