Record Plant, New York City
Producers: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Phil Spector
Engineers: Roy Cicala, Shelly Yakus, Jack Douglas
The 11th and final recording session for John Lennon’s second solo album Imagine took place on 5 July 1971.
It was initially intended as a mixing session, and began with a remix of ‘Imagine’ followed by the mixing of ‘How?’.
Before work could begin on mixing ‘Jealous Guy’, saxophonist King Curtis (Curtis Ousley) visited the studio. Lennon had first met him during The Beatles’ 1965 tour of North America.
Curtis was invited to overdub sax onto ‘It’s So Hard’ and ‘I Don’t Want To Be A Soldier’. They proved to be among his final performances: he was murdered on 13 August 1971, shortly before Imagine was released.
Both songs were then mixed in stereo, as was ‘Jealous Guy’, which marked the completion of the album. It was mastered the following day, and on 7 July additional mixes were made of six songs for a special quadrophonic edition.