John Lennon - John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is the debut solo studio album by British singer-songwriter John Lennon, originally released in December 1970 via Apple Records.

Considered his strongest solo release after the break-up of The Beatles in April 1970, this album contains a set of very personal and reflective songs. Yoko and John had flown to the US in 1970 to continue his primal therapy sessions that were aimed at reliving repressed childhood traumas. Although the therapy sessions were never completed due to his US visa expiring, John was able to transfer his emotions into material that would become the basis for this album.

Songs like “Mother” dealt with his abandonment as a young boy by both of his parents, containing a very short lyric, sung with incredible emotion, including screams. Other tracks like “Working Class Hero” deal with how the young are manipulated or brainwashed into following orders into war. “Isolation” addresses how fortune and fame can’t erase feelings of being on the outside of human social circles, especially when agitating for change. “Remember” deals with unpleasant memories from childhood with regards to authority, family and peers.

Another powerful song is “God” in which Lennon renounces belief in external saviours and concepts (such as Jesus, Kennedy, The Beatles, Buddha) concluding that he believes only in himself and Yoko.

The album concludes with the emotional and roughly recorded “My Mummy’s Dead”, an event that had a huge impact on the young Lennon when he lost his mother in 1958.

The album was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London in September to October 1970 with a core group of musicians of Ringo Starr (drums) and Klaus Voormann (bass) with John and Yoko producing with Phil Spector. Billy Preston plays piano on “God”. Spector was absent for most of the recording sessions and mixed the album over three days towards the end of October 1970, meaning that the album was primarily produced by John and Yoko.

The albums distinctive cover artwork photograph was taken in the garden of Lennon’s Tittenhurst Park estate and an almost identical photograph was taken and used for Yoko’s companion album Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band also released on the same date 11 December 1970, with the same core musicians recording her album.

More than any other album in Lennon’s solo career this was a farewell to the past and a cathartic exorcism for him. The album is brilliant and was most unexpected by Beatles fans when it was released in 1970, being very different from anything he had produced up to this time – raw, emotional, disturbing and challenging.

It is regarded as his finest and most complete work, and it has not diminished in its impact and resonance more than fifty years on.

The original John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album has been faithfully remixed from the ground up by the triple GRAMMY Award winning engineer Paul Hicks at Abbey Road Studios under the supervision of Yoko Ono Lennon. Hicks utilized high-definition 192kHz/24bit audio transfers of the original first-generation multitrack recordings to create the best possible recreations of the originals. The result is these new Ultimate Mixes now reveal whole new levels of sonic depth, definition and clarity, especially in 5.1 Surround Sound and Dolby Atmos.

“Yoko is very keen that in making The Ultimate Mixes Series, we achieve three things: remain faithful and respectful to the originals, ensure that the sound is generally sonically clearer overall, and increase the clarity of John’s vocals. ‘It’s about John’ she says. And she is right. His voice brings the biggest emotional impact to the album.”

The 2LP vinyl gatefold edition includes a second LP of outtakes.

This double album 2LP record set is on 180 gram black vinyl housed in gatefold sleeve with printed inner sleeves, booklet and poster, pressed in Europe via Apple Records.