When sitting down to watch the ‘JOHN and YOKO – ABOVE US ONLY SKY’ documentary (Director Michael Epstein, 90 mins) shown recently on Channel Four, it was under the pre-conceived notion of finding insight into how the 1971 John Lennon album ‘IMAGINE‘ came to be recorded.
Part of that impression proved to be true as there is plenty of footage of the sessions at Tittenhurst Park in Surrey (where John and Yoko lived at the time) from which the album emerged – but there is nearly as much focus on their lives beyond the recording studio, stretching from family to politics, art to business.
Altogether it is an absorbing and revealing (very, at times) portrait of how the Lennon’s viewed the world barely a year into the 70s, although those in thrall to John may have appreciated more of the singer and composer and less the sometimes contradictory political activist.
Fifteen months on from the Beatles break-up John is gathering a group of musicians, studio hands and various other associates to begin work on his second proper solo album – a follow-up to the bleak, but utterly brilliant ‘Plastic Ono Band‘ LP of the previous year.
Those reflecting on their involvement from a contemporary perspective include drummers Jim Keltner and Alan White, Klaus Voorman (bass) and Eddie Veale (engineer). Offering close relative and journalistic observations are Yoko Ono and Julian Lennon along with Roy Connolly (Evening Standard) and Kieron Murphy (Sounds), who like Yoko and Julian are seen in many of the original shots.
The intimate, yet relaxed atmosphere in which the album evolved at Tittenhurst is emphasised in an early scene when John, Yoko, Voorman, George Harrison, White, album coordinator Dan Richter and Apple Records secretary Diana Robertson are breakfasting on tea and beans on toast around a large kitchen table.
At times Harrison looks uncomfortable in front of the camera, as if fearful of a ‘Let It Be‘ repeat when The Beatles internal squabbles were captured on film (in this piece George looks most content behind his guitar). Reticence is also displayed by producer Phil Spector, who dressed in collar, tie and sharp three piece suit, gives the impression a New York gangster has wandered by mistake into a hippie commune – but when he calls time on breakfast, everyone, without exception, decamps to the adjoining recording studio.
In performing her admin duties Diana Robertson is frequently on hand and in reminiscing produces two great Lennon anecdotes. One relates to her first morning working at Apple Records in 1969, Robertson given the job of sending Lennon’s MBE back to Buckingham Palace – with the second attached directly to the ‘Imagine‘ album, being present in the studio when John delivered the stunning vocal track on ‘Jealous Guy.’
Few would dispute ‘Imagine‘ is an excellent album, containing as it does such memorable songs as ‘Crippled Inside,’ ‘Gimme Some Truth,’ ‘Jealous Guy,’ ‘Oh My Love,’ the opening title song and ‘How Do You Sleep,’ a barely disguised attack on former compadre Paul McCartney.
Written in response to some gentle digs Paul gave John on his recent ‘Ram‘ album, John fires back with (acerbic) interest, this stinging riposte marking the nadir in their post-Beatle relationship.
But of all the songs on the LP it is ‘Imagine‘ naturally, that receives the most attention in terms of film time and scrutiny. Several close to Lennon comment on the lyric, one labeling it ‘a utopian manifesto for a progressive society,’ which is an assessment hard to disagree with – but the most revealing comment comes from Lennon himself, who in an interview given only days before his death in December 1980 admits:
‘The ‘”Imagine” track should be credited as a Lennon-Ono song. The lyric and concept came from Yoko.’
If, as claimed in the film, ‘Imagine‘ is an appeal to create a new world, it does make the line, ‘Imagine no possessions,’ a touch incongruous, particularly when the song was written in a mansion surrounded by 99 acres of land, containing a lake, swimming pool, Rolls-Royce car and recording studio.
Which is not to undermine the sentiment or fine intentions of the song – but to this listener still makes ‘Working Class Hero‘ from his previous album, the most brilliantly drawn song on the human condition John Lennon wrote in his solo years.
As political activists John and Yoko show laudable opposition to the war still raging in Vietnam, but elsewhere some of their stances come across as a bit preachy and sloganeering (such over politicising would render much of his next album ‘Sometime In New York City‘ almost un-listenable).
Indeed while they were shouting slogans, George Harrison seized the initiative with regard to altruism, staging a concert in New York in August 1971 to raise money for famine sufferers in Bangladesh. Which is not to say Lennon was without empathy for troubled souls, far from it, but in ‘Above Us Only Sky‘ is best displayed on a personal level.
When a once-hospitalised, shell-shocked Vietnam veteran shows up at the front door of Tittenhurst, in an episode that eerily foreshadows Lennon’s violent death nine years later, the young man has written John a series of letters which border on the obsessive – at times thinking he is Lennon.
John tries to explain how his songs should not be confused with anything in the man’s life:
‘A lot of the time it’s just having fun with words. Throwing out a bunch of words to see if they have meaning. I’m just singing about my life and if it fits with someone else’s that’s alright‘.
Seeing how perturbed and disheveled he is, John invites the man inside to eat, with the next scene showing the Vet sitting at the kitchen table eating a meal.
While history has come to regard the ‘Imagine‘ album as not quite reaching the heights of its predecessor (in truth very few LP’s are comparable with ‘Plastic Ono Band‘), the title track will forever remain his most distinctive composition – with the final word on such a seminal song best left to a Lennon, who can justifiably speak from a ‘I know, I was there,’ standpoint.
As the documentary comes to a close Julian Lennon remarks:
”Imagine’ does not shove its message down people throats. It’s not religious, not political. It’s about humanity and the life we all want. That’s why the song is so important today because the world is still in a bad way. Why is it impossible to move forward with those dreams and make them reality?’
This article was first published on 6/12/18.
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NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of MONTY’S DOUBLE – an acclaimed thriller now available as an Amazon Kindle Book.