2021 reissue
A reissue of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band was announced on 4 March 2021, ahead of its 16 April.The super deluxe box set included 159 tracks spread across six CDs and two Blu-ray discs, amounting to more than eleven hours of audio. It also included a “War Is Over” poster, two postcards, and a 132-page hardback book with lyrics, rare photos, and extensive notes on the recording and release.
The album was remixed from the original multitrack tapes at Abbey Road Studios by Paul Hicks, supervised by Yoko Ono. These “Ultimate Mixes” will include new stereo, 5.1 surround sound, and Dolby Atmos mixes.
Previously-unreleased stereo outtakes of each song are presented as “rough listening mixes”, in the style that the musicians and producer Phil Spector would have heard during playback at Abbey Road.
In addition to the super deluxe box set, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band will be reissued as a half-speed mastered two-LP vinyl set, and double and single CD editions. All but the single CD came with the “War Is Over” poster.
CD1: THE ULTIMATE MIXES (53 mins)
- Mother
- Hold On
- I Found Out
- Working Class Hero
- Isolation
- Remember
- Love
- Well Well Well
- Look At Me
- God
- My Mummy’s Dead
- Give Peace A Chance
- Cold Turkey
- Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)
CD2: THE ULTIMATE MIXES/THE OUT-TAKES (49 mins)
- Mother/Take 61*
- Hold On/Take 2*
- I Found Out/Take 1*
- Working Class Hero/Take 1*
- Isolation/Take 23*
- Remember/Rehearsal 1*
- Love/Take 6*
- Well Well Well/Take 2*
- Look At Me/Take 2*
- God/Take 27*
- My Mummy’s Dead/Take 2*
- Give Peace A Chance/Take 2**
- Cold Turkey/Take 1**
- Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)/Take 5**
CD3: THE ELEMENTS MIXES (60 mins)
- Mother
- Hold On
- I Found Out
- Working Class Hero
- Isolation
- Remember
- Love
- Well Well Well
- Look At Me
- God
- My Mummy’s Dead
- Give Peace A Chance
- Cold Turkey
- Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)
CD4: THE RAW STUDIO MIXES (74 mins)
- Mother/Take 64
- Hold On/Take 32
- I Found Out/Take 3 Extended
- Working Class Hero/Take 9
- Isolation/Take 29
- Remember/Take 13
- Love/Take 37
- Well Well Well/Take 4 Extended
- Look At Me/Take 9
- God/Take 42
- My Mummy’s Dead/Take 1
- Give Peace A Chance/Take 4 Extended
- Cold Turkey/Take 2
- Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)/Take 10
- Mother/Take 91
- I Found Out/Take 7
- God/Take 1
CD5: THE EVOLUTION DOCUMENTARY (72 mins)
- Mother
- Hold On
- I Found Out
- Working Class Hero
- Isolation
- Remember
- Love
- Well Well Well
- Look At Me
- God
- My Mummy’s Dead
CD6: THE JAMS & THE DEMOS (71 mins)
- Johnny B. Goode (Jam)
- Ain’t That A Shame (Jam)
- Hold On (1) (Jam)
- Hold On (2) (Jam)
- Glad All Over (Jam)
- Be Faithful To Me (Jam)
- Send Me Some Lovin’ (Jam)
- Get Back (Jam)
- Lost John (1) (Jam)
- Goodnight Irene (Jam)
- You’ll Never Walk Alone (Parody) (Jam)
- I Don’t Want To A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die (1) (Jam)
- It’ll Be Me (Jam)
- Honey Don’t (Jam)
- Elvis Parody (Don’t Be Cruel/Hound Dog/When I’m Over You) (Jam)
- Matchbox (Jam)
- I’ve Got A Feeling (Jam)
- Mystery Train (Jam)
- You’re So Square (Jam)
- I Don’t Want To Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die (2) (Jam)
- Lost John (2) (Jam)
- Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking For A Hand In The Snow) (Jam)
- Mother (Home Demo)
- Hold On (Studio Demo)
- I Found Out (Home Demo)
- Working Class Hero (Studio Demo)
- Isolation (Studio Demo)
- Remember (Studio Demo)
- Love (Home Demo)
- Well Well Well (Home Demo)
- Look At Me (Home Demo)
- God (Home Demo)
- My Mummy’s Dead (Home Demo)
Blu-ray 1
All tracks in Stereo 24/192, Dolby Atmos and 5.1 Surround Sound
- The Ultimate Mixes Album And Singles
- The Ultimate Mixes Outtakes
- The Elements Mixes Album And Singles
- The Demos Album And Singles
Blu-ray 2
All tracks in Stereo 24/192, Dolby Atmos and 5.1 Surround Sound
- The Raw Studio Mixes Album And Singles
- The Raw Studio Mixes Outtakes
- The Evolution Mixes Album And Singles
- The Jams Live And Improvised
- Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band The Live Sessions:
- Why
- Why Not
- Greenfield Morning I Pushed An Empty Baby Carriage All Over The City
- Touch Me
- Paper Shoes
- Life
- Omae No Okaa We
- I Lost Myself Somewhere In The Sky
- Remember Love
- Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking For A Hand In The Snow)
- Who Has Seen The Wind?
* Also on the double vinyl and two-CD set
** Also on the two-CD set
Well, well, well. Oh, well. No comments yet? Too bad. This is a tough album to listen to. When I first heard it I was scared from listening to it again. It isn’t the Beatles, folks. Eventually I did listen to it again and appreciated the rather impromptu nature of the set-up. John didn’t try to hard to hide the mistakes. Anyway, it is now one of my favorites of all time. The emotion leaps from the speakers. “Mother” is fantastic! Beyond a shadow of a doubt this song alone proves John was the most gifted vocalist of the Fabs. No one else on Earth could sing this. And then he turns in one of the more lovely tunes ‘Love’ and ends up singing ‘God’ in the perhaps the best vocal ever – ‘The dream is over … etc’. You want to know about John’s guitar work? Here it is! It’s a mess and yet it works absolutely. Nobody had guitar tone like John. Most amazing of all – despite the sparcity of instrumentation, each song sounds entirely different. Genius! An amazing piece of work.
Yes it is great. Phil Spector was not present for most of the album and Ringo complained that he hardly ever saw Phil during the entire sessions.
After John recorded a song he would mix that same day or evening according to the engineers who were there.
This info is available on the Classic Albums series.
Anybody who would complain about Phil Spector’s absence clearly needs to find something more to complain about!
Maybe complain is the wrong word but since Lennon & company were waiting for Phil to the point where they had to take a full page ad in Billboard! Perhaps impatience at the tardiness of Spector would be more suitable to your liking.
Oh, I don’t like or dislike any part of it – I’m just facetiously suggesting that most people would prefer not to spend much time working with gun-toting madmen.
Back then in September-October 1970 Spector’s gun-toting habits were not known.
Ronnie Spector knew.
“N.M.E. said “Lennon put his balls on the line and the train ground to a halt out of sheer respect” As a 12 year old, I listened to this in awe and amazement! The first track “Mother” was so full of pain and honesty, it stopped you in your tracks. I had lost my own mother at 9 years old, so I could relate to the loss. Other tracks like “Working Class Hero”, still sound great to me. “God” was a jaw breaker with its ” I don’t believe in list…….finishing with the Beatles, and “the dream is over, so my dear friends you just have to carry on”, had their ever been such honesty on a record? Other great tracks like “Remember”, the beautiful “Love” ,”Isolation” “Look at me” (could easily have been on the “White” album) were superb tracks, with not quite the publicity of the more famous tracks. Some friends of mine didn’t like the album, too personal, too much pain, but to me it stands up as a great piece of work.”
I too was 12 when it came out, and had the same reaction.
Well Well Well has a vocal unlike any I have ever heard. I agree, this LP shows his amazing talent. In 1970 I played it over and over, learning the songs. Underrated by the world however.
Personally I like this album a lot. Definitely not the Beatles. It is brutal in its direct lyrics and production. ..but that’s what I dig about it. It feels honest.
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this well-written article. Working Class Hero has long been one of my favourite, John Lennon songs.
This album is a favorite of mine so I thought I would add a few random observations.
It is interesting that after the failure of the back-to-basics Let It Be/Get Back sessions, both John and Paul took the back-to-basics approach for their first solo albums. Although the emotional impact of the two albums couldn’t be much more different–“McCartney” being warm and comfortable, “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band” being wrenching.
John uses the finger-picking pattern he learned from Donovan in India here on “Look At Me”. Very “Julia”-like.
He also uses a lot of pentatonic scales for melodies here, as he did with “Don’t Let Me Down” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”. E.g. in “Well Well Well”, “Hold On”, and “I Found Out”. These melodies don’t sound quite like the blues and don’t sound quite like the Far East–something in between.
A lot of John’s Beatle songs, even as late as Abbey Road (“Because”, “Sun King”, the 6/8 part of “I Want You”), had unorthodox chord progressions that moved the song along maybe even more than the melodies did. Here the harmonic complications are for the most part stripped away. Stripped away also is the Beatles-era Lennonesque word play. This lets the literal meaning of the straightforward and emotionally-charged lyrics hold center stage.
My copy of the LP (bought in the US around the time of its release) has the uncensored lyrics to “Working Class Hero” presented on the inner sleeve. No asterisks.
I think the only instrumental solo-type part is the piano on the fade out of “Love”. Instead of guitar solos or piano solos, he uses extended vocal/screaming parts sort of like in “Well Well Well”, “I Found Out”, and “Mother”. While this was no doubt the primal scream influence, it is also a lot like what he does on the full-length take of “Revolution 1”.
I like how he plays a droning 7th note together with the pentatonic melody in “Well Well Well”. Nice lead guitar playing.
I’ve often wondered how Lennon expected/hoped the album would chart. I know he got a lot of flack at the time for the lyrical tone of this record and the frank nature of the Wenner interview. Also always impressed that he didn’t feel the need to bring in any other guitars, which would have totally changed the sound. Don’t think he ever took the role as lone guitar on an LP again.
This is a major work by a real artist…it takes a lot of courage to create this collective work. He was well aware that this album would not commercially chart and he knew of its artistic merit, as did Rolling Stone publication. After listening to this work of art when released in 1970 my respect and admiration of this artist was overwhelming indeed.
This album did “commercially chart” if you had bothered to read the info before the comments. It reached number 6 in the USA, the biggest commercial music market in the world. Just because it wasn’t a number one album doesn’t mean it didn’t “commercially chart”.
John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band is one of the greatest albums of all time and Lennons finest. Gut wrenching and raw. The primal therapy with Dr Arthur Janov had brought to the surface all of the pain of John Lennons childhood and the resulting demons that had helped shape his genius . This album is a great example of that genius. John Lennons wonderful vocals backed by the spartan musical grouping of Lennon himself,Ringo Starr,Klaus Voorman,Billy Preston and Yoko Ono and Phil Spector on hand; produces an album that challenges and inspires.Mother, God and Working Class Hero in particular fall into this category. These three songs stand among rocks most brilliant. And Remember,Isolation, Love and Look At Me are just simply beautiful. What a way to end an album-My Mummys Dead.
great power trio: lennon/starr/voormann.
I’ve always loved and admired this album. Without going into too much detail my childhood shared similar agonies to john’s and i always found this record comforting in a strange way.
As for lennon it’s his most impressive work outside the beatles, rewriting the rule book for confessional singer songwriter albums into the book. Its the first time john really reached down into his soul and brought back who he really was without any attempts to sweeten the message at all…. in a way that was impossible with the beatles. John’s candour was always his main attribute as a songwriter and here it’s really let loose.
Also as a musician this and the accompanying record with yoko show a whole new side to his guitar playing away from the beatles. The primitive sound is invigorating too a million miles away from the overproduction of ‘abbey road’.
‘working class hero’ is the classic though, john hoped it would resonate with the workers and by god so it should. It gets to the heart of the unchanging human condition perfectly without getting mired in politics. ‘i found out’ rocks like a bastard and has a stinging anger to it. ‘mother’ and ‘god’ are unbearably sad but hugely cathartic.
A masterpiece, and i’ve always found the sequence of the song titles interesting,almost like lennon was delivering a subliminal message to his audience of his condition.
After the incredible evolutionary journey of the four mop tops ending in Abbey Road where The Beatles sang, ” And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make!” to THIS! Just a superb piece of work! What a contrast and culmination! Lennon was naked and raw and completely honest and the vocal performances range from tender and nuanced to downright desperate screaming in a way only John Lennon could produce. The sound of the tracks are also naked, reflecting the material. The grunt of Klaus’s bass and the relentless boom of Ringo’s bass drum. It was a relief to me that he had Klaus and Ringo and Billy with him, that he surrounded himself with friends while recording such a painful, lonely at times, album. Finally, the songs….they are just amazing. Lennon set a new precedent for soul-baring in rock music!
‘The Plastic Ono Band’ has more sheer depth than any album or musical composition ever made, period, nothing else even comes close. It has had an effect on me my whole life, it was a revolutionary recording; never before had a record been so explicitly introspective and it is unique in all of popular music.
From a sheer depth perspective the Plastic Ono Band Album is greater than any Beatle album.
The Lennon depth effect was conceptual, philosophical, psychological and sub-psychological; this was due for the most part to his song writing technics that evoke deep understanding of both pain and pathos. There is something unique about Lennon’s voice that cannot be described only felt and it has nothing to do with technical ability. John Lennon had unusual tone and method, his practice of singing 3 or 4 notes on one lyric, his genius use of minor chord progressions and notes that evoke deep pathos and feeling combined with his lyrics that transfer unique concepts and mutual human understanding to the listener.
During these sessions lennon Star and Voorman did a lot of rock and roll songs. Dying for them to be released lennon doing Elvis don’t be cruel along with many other songs I have heard they are high quality versions. Come on yoko release these tracks
Since this album is pretty bare-bones instrumentation-wise, maybe John should’ve brought his harmonica back out of mothballs and added it to the mix.
Underneath the raw surfaces of Lennon´s harder songs, interstingly there is always harmonically warm music. That goes even for I found out, Remember and Well, well, well. Examples of such Beatle-Lennon songs are I want you, Don´t let me down and Yer blues.
Roger Waters from Pink Floyd was very, very impressed and inspired by Plastic Ono Band. It showed him a whole new direction in songwriting. The musically more theoretically interested Paul Simon was not impressed though. When it comes to ways of composing he likes more that of Paul McCartney, whom he holds as the greatest pop/rock songwriter of all.
My favourites on Plastic Ono Band are Mother, Working class hero and Isolation. After taking out the chords and melodies of the album´s songs a few days ago, I have come to appreciate the other numbers a lot more than before, especially God.