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John Lennon’s first post-Beatles album remembered in a Classic Albums documentary

The program, Classic Albums, has once again released a great DVD featuring former Beatle, John Lennon and his first post-Beatle album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Not only was this album an important musical juggernaut, but also it was a personal view into Lennon’s life as well as a socio-political message to the world.

Lennon is seen occasionally on some programs and is heard in taped interviews throughout this DVD as it appeared on the hour-long TV broadcast version. There are also plenty of interviews with his widow, Yoko Ono, who put out an album (which was recorded at the same time and looks almost exactly like Lennon’s album), drummer Ringo Starr, bassist Klaus Voorman a few engineers a couple of critics, Dr. Arthur Janov and Rolling Stone magazine co-founder, Jann Wenner. The interviews and playback of the tracks are pretty in-depth and show some interesting behind-the-scenes events that reveals a little more about Lennon’s personality – both his serious and his lighter side.

Besides some old TV interviews, there are lots of scenes of Lennon marching in protest events, the famous bed-in, scenes from ”Imagine” and some other home footage. There is also a decent amount of footage of Lennon and band in the studio and onstage, such as what appears to be his famous New York concert that became a live album. The most interesting part of the interviews, I found, was in regards to producer Phil Spector and his role, or lack thereof, in the making of the record.

In addition to the broadcast version, there is an additional 37 minutes of footage with more interviews and some interesting versions and soloed pieces of the studio recordings.

Alas, there are no interviews with the late George Harrison or Paul McCartney. Granted, they didn’t work on the album, and the feud between John and Paul was beginning to really become inflamed at that point of Lennon’s career. Still, it would’ve been nice to have them as a part of this disc.

The DVD is widescreen, in English but has subtitles in English, French and Spanish. The audio is in Dolby Digital Stereo.

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