As he promised months ago, Sean Lennon and the Lennon Estate have this week formally announced they’ll releasing (on 10 October, 2025) a mega box set focusing on John Lennon playing live in New York in the year 1972.
It’s called Power To The People (The Ultimate Collection) and is released in time to celebrate John Lennon’s 85th birthday.
The big box set comprises 9 CDs and no less than 3 Blu-Ray audio discs, all packaged in the 10-inch sized slipcase that has been the hallmark of all the John Lennon super-deluxe re-issues so far. This one will come with a cool lenticular cover of John & Yoko’s faces presenting a “dynamic 3D effect”.
The box set will be accompanied by a 204-page hardback book designed and edited by long-time Lennon Estate historian and archivist, Simon Hilton and features an oral history about all the included music through the words of John & Yoko and those involved, sourced from both archival and new interviews.
The book will be illustrated with unseen photos, lyrics, drawings, tape boxes and memorabilia. Additionally, the set includes a newspaper print poster, sticker sheets and a VIP envelope containing replica concert tickets plus backstage and after-show passes that have all been uniquely reproduced with textured, archival materials.
The centerpiece of Power To The People is the ‘One To One Concerts’, which were Lennon’s only full-length concerts after The Beatles, and his final shows with Yoko Ono, raised more than US$1.5 million (2025 equivalent of $11.5 million) to support children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Both the afternoon and evening performances are being released together for the first time.
Alongside those two concerts, Power To The People (Super Deluxe Edition) offers an aural time capsule of John & Yoko’s first NYC era, when they traded Tittenhurst Park, their estate in Ascot, England, for a small apartment located at 105 Bank St. in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, and includes the music they were inspired to make during a time of great civil unrest and the deeply unpopular Vietnam War.
Paramount to their recorded musical endeavors at this time was their 1972 political blockbuster album, Sometime In New York City, recorded by John & Yoko with Jim Keltner and New York’s finest rock ‘n’ roll protest street band, Elephant’s Memory.
For this special collection, songs from the album have been completely remixed from scratch, stripped of the overly heavy production sound that constrained such inspired and inspiring songs as ‘Attica State’, ‘Angela’, ‘New York City’, and ‘Born In A Prison’. Noticeably missing is the controversial song (back then and perhaps now even mores), ‘Woman Is The N***** Of The World’. Some fans are upset about that but the song is still easily available on streaming services and on CD if you want it. Live versions from the ‘One To One’ concerts can also be had on the Lennon Anthology collection from 1998, and on John Lennon – Live in New York City released in 1986.
For this box set the tracks from Sometime In New York City have been reordered, rejuvenated and completely re-imagined as a new set of Ultimate Mixes, simply entitled New York City, which also includes extended versions of ‘John Sinclair’ and ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’.
In addition to the Deluxe 9 CD/3 Blu-Ray box there will be a four LP version with the afternoon and evening ‘One To One’ concerts:
There’ll also be a 2LP edition on black vinyl featuring a “hybrid” best-of from both live shows:
This “hybrid” best-of will also be available as a Limited Edition 2LP in transparent green vinyl:
Both the afternoon and evening ‘One To One’ shows will available as a 2CD Deluxe Edition housed in a triple gatefold digisleeve:
And there will be a 1CD Edition containing the “hybrid” best-of which, like the 2LP edition combines the two shows to create a one show best-of in a digisleeve:
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario