"Lost" Footage Of John Lennon Recording "Imagine" Unearthed For New Documentary

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"Lost" Footage Of John Lennon Recording "Imagine" Unearthed For New Documentary
MILES IN THE MORNING

MARCH 11, 2019

(Photo by PA Images/Sipa USA)

Filmmaker Michael Epstein feels like he hit a music goldmine.

Yoko Ono made available to him footage that the world thought was long lost, showing exclusive footage of John Lennon rehearsing, recording, and performing songs from his second album Imagine.  Epstein told WENN, "Yoko realized there was all this material that had been shot that nobody had ever seen.  I thought I had seen everything and I thought I knew the story, but I remember seeing this footage for the first time and just being blown away…"

One of the many surprises Epstein found while combing through the footage was George Harrison performing on the track "How," of which he has never been credited.  "I open the film with John at an upright piano playing out the chords to "How," which is on the Imagine album, and the camera pulls back and you see it’s George Harrison who is playing.  George is not credited on the album for playing "How."  Nobody has ever seen this material before."

The lost footage also includes intimate moments of Lennon and Ono's including them "holed up at the St. Regis Hotel in New York."  The video shows Lennon sitting on a couch playing guitar and singing songs which according to Epstein, "You see the real John as a fly on the wall."

All of the footage was complied into a documentary, John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky, which airs on A&E tonight.  

Via Canoe

edition.cnn.com
'John and Yoko' offers intimate look at the making of 'Imagine'
By Brian Lowry, CNN
March 11, 2019


George Harrison, John Lennon and Yoko Ono (Photo by Spud Murphy/Copyright Yoko Ono)

(CNN)Cultural immortality belongs to a very few, a subject that comes up in a pair of documentaries this week devoted to 20th-century icons, John Lennon and Richard Pryor.

The A&E presentation "John and Yoko: Above Us Only Sky" is the more intimate of the two -- a deep dive into the making of Lennon and wife Yoko Ono's "Imagine" album in 1971, which feels like must-see TV for rock fans. Later in the week, Paramount Network will air "I Am Richard Pryor," the latest in a series of "I Am" biographies devoted, frequently, to those who died too soon.

Culled in part from an extensive trove of home video -- including never-before-seen footage shot around Lennon's place in Tittenhurst Park, England -- with up-to-date interviews, "John & Yoko" provides a glimpse of Lennon in his studio/home, interacting not only with his wife but in recording sessions with fellow Beatle George Harrison, guitarist Eric Clapton and producer Phil Spector.

Much of the documentary focuses on the romance between Lennon and Ono, while acknowledging the vicious and often bigoted response elicited by the perception that she "broke up" the Fab Four.

There's also a strong sense of the idealism that informed Lennon's solo work and his forays into politics, which as detailed here includes the decision to return his Member of the Most Honorable Order of the British Empire medal, or MBE, to the Queen in 1973 as a form of protest. Separately, the special contains an unsettling illustration of the burdens of fame, as Lennon patiently and calmly deals with an obsessive fan who has shown up unannounced at his home.

At one point Lennon talks about recording the song "So This is Christmas" as something that will "last forever," but friends note that when recording "Imagine" he didn't fully recognize its enduring significance, which activist Tariq Ali describes as "a utopian manifesto for a progressive movement."

John & Yoko Above Us Only Sky' a John Lennon and Yoko Ono documentary show a untold story of Imagine

Although "John and Yoko" focuses somewhat narrowly on a very specific moment in time, it provides a vivid portrait of Lennon, Ono and what brought them together, creating a poignant reminder of what they accomplished, as well as what was lost.

As son Julian Lennon puts it, the allure of "Imagine" was "We all really want what he's singing about." It's a thought that takes on a more sobering dimension contemplating how this champion of peace died in an act of violence at age 40, extinguishing all that brilliance and passion with so much sky above him, and so much life ahead of him.

"John and Yoko: Above Us Only Sky" premieres March 11 at 9 p.m. on A&E.

"I Am Richard Pryor" premieres March 15 at 10 p.m. on Paramount Network, after a March 12 premiere at the SXSW Festival.