Rare and Unseen for 48 years - John Lennon & Yoko Ono At The Record Plant Interview, NYC May 1972.

‘Most other people express themselves by playing football at weekends or shouting. But here am I in New York and I hear about thirteen people shot dead in Ireland and I react immediately. And being what I am I react in four-to-the-bar with a guitar break in the middle.’ – John Lennon, 1972 Soon his musical output bounced between the overtly universal ‘Give Peace A Chance’ and the personal soul-searching of his solo debut John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. His most successful album, Imagine, had elements of both. Through it all, a talent he recognised in himself was his knack for a big, instant anthem. In the lineage of ‘All You Need Is Love’ were other classics of unashamed sloganeering like ‘Power To The People’ and ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’. They satisfied an artistic craving, too, for what songwriter would not love to match the moral resonance of ‘We Shall Overcome’, or the perennial popularity of ‘White Christmas’? Famously impatient, John had yet another itch to scratch. He wanted to write, record and issue his records in a heartbeat. He nearly did it, too, with the marvellous ‘Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)’, which he’d sent from his imagination to the record stores within two weeks. And now, in February 1972, he found himself a resident of Greenwich Village, right in the creative heart of the most dynamic city on earth. He’d hooked up with a radical bar-band called Elephant’s Memory, whose funky swagger suited John’s new mood. Sometime In New York City is the album they made together: it’s a world away from the studio-crafted art rock of the Sgt. Pepper era five years earlier; this is fast, reactive, rough-and-ready music, to be released in all its imperfections, as hurriedly as a daily newspaper. Barely six months earlier, John and Yoko still lived in the gracious seclusion of Tittenhurst Park, outside London. They had moved to New York, in part, to further Yoko’s quest for custody of her daughter Kyoko. In the event, continued squabbling with the US immigration authorities made it risky to leave the country, and their stay assumed a permanent look. That was fine by John, who took to the gritty downtown scene with gusto, mixing at his Bank Street apartment with Yippies, Black Panthers and street musicians. For the first time since Liverpool Art School, John was revelling in bohemian life, an escapee from suburbia. New York, he marvelled, was a latter day Rome, the cultural hub of the known world. At the same time, beneath the glitz it was a little like Liverpool- another streetwise seaport where Lennon’s salty wit was right at home. In March 1972, the album was recorded. Phil Spector co-produced once more, at least at the final mixing stage, while Elephant’s Memory were augmented by the renowned drummer Jim Keltner. Copyright - Underground News