 Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon
John Lennon On October 9, 2005, John Lennon would have turned 65, if only...
Instead, the former Beatles leader and endlessly complex rock icon remains forever frozen in time, basking in the warm reception of his 1980 return to recording after a long, self-imposed exile from the music business. But this two-disc, 38-track collection does more than merely commemorate the landmark birthday Lennon tragically never celebrated; it's arguably the best compact overview of his often conflicted post-Fabs career. Considering he spent fully half the decade chronicled here in semi-retirement, it's a remarkably robust and diverse body of work, whether focused on sloganeering agit-prop ("Power to the People," "Woman is the Nigger of the World," "Give Peace a Chance," "Working Class Hero"), semi-autobiographical musings that ranged from the harrowing ("Cold Turkey," "Mother") to the unabashedly sentimental ("Oh Yoko!," "Watching the Wheels," "Starting Over"). "Imagine" and "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" may showcase one of the era's most wide-eyed idealists, but the range of emotions cataloged in much of his other work argue that John Lennon was a bundle of emotional and philosophical complexities. As Yoko One once noted, "People have wanted to box him in..But he was a very human, three-dimensional person... Sometimes he was angry, sometimes he was sad, sometimes he was very vulnerable and sweet. All of that was going on in every period of his life." This set never sidesteps those complications; indeed, the songs collected here thrive on them.
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 Acoustic
John Lennon Capitol is prepping the release of a new John Lennon compilation of acoustic recordings, due November 2. The production of the album was supervised by the artist's widow, Yoko Ono.
The 17-track "Acoustic" collects favorites from the former Beatle's solo career, including "Working Class Hero" and "Watching the Wheels," as well as live acoustic renditions of the "Sometime in New York" songs "Luck of the Irish" and "John Sinclair," and his peace anthem "Imagine."
Seven of the acoustic cuts will be officially released here for the first time: "Well Well Well," "God," "My Mummy's Dead," "Cold Turkey," "What You Got," "Dear Yoko" and "Real Love."
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 Rock N Roll [EXTRA TRACKS — ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]
John Lennon Each year, Lennon's widow Yoko Ono has been re-releasing remastered versions of the Lennon catalogue.
'Rock 'n' Roll' was a collection of rock and roll covers. When released in 1975, it became his last album for five years when he re-surfaced after a self-imposed exile with 'Double Fantasy'. Less than two months after the release of 'Double Fantasy', he was shot dead outside his home at the Dakota Building in New York's Central Park.
The album started in 1973 with producer Phil Spector at the helm. Lennon picked up the sessions two years later and finished self-produced the remainder of the recordings.
'Angel Baby' was recorded during the original Spector sessions and although released on 'Menlove Avenue', is reunited here on the 'Rock 'n' Roll' album.
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  Lennon LegendJohn Lennon's solo work has been anthologized so many times that it's hard to
believe there wasn't a definitive compilation before this one.
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 Happy Christmas (War Is Over) (En [CD-SINGLE] [IMPORT] 2003 reissue of the classic single. Features four tracks taken from the 1997 compilation Lennon Legend, 'Happy Xmas (War Is Over)', 'Imagine', 'Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)' & 'Imagine' (Instrumental), as well as an enhanced section with photo gallery. Parlophone. 2003.
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 The John Lennon AnthologyJohn the primal screamer, John the street politician, John the L.A. party boy, and
John the house husband. The John Lennon Anthology provides a window into all
those phases of the artist's post-Beatles career.
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 WonsaponatimeIf The John Lennon Anthology is the musical equivalent of a scholarly four-part
biography that looks terrific on the bookshelf and is enjoyable to page through now
and then, Wonsaponatime is the condensed popular-press bio that one can
actually settle down with and digest.
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 Milk and HoneyOriginally released in 1984, four years after John Lennon's death, Milk & Honey is probably best thought of as a companion piece to the better-known Double Fantasy. Like Double Fantasy, Milk & Honey contains equal but separate contributions from Lennon and Ono: lashings of dreadful, self-indulgent arty noodling (mostly, but not exclusively, Ono's) interspersed with sharp, pugnacious songwriting (mostly, but not exclusively, Lennon's).
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 Two Virgins Decades later, Two Virgins is still best known for bearing the most notorious album cover in rock history: John and Yoko naked and unashamed in their filthy boudoir, staring out the camera with glassy heroin eyes. It is remembered also as a historical artefact: it was recorded overnight, high on love and drugs in Lennon's mansion, before the couple first consummated their relationship.
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 Menlove AveConsisting of out-takes from the Rock 'N' Roll/Walls and Bridges albums,this is amust for Lennon fans looking to add to their collections
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 Unfinished Music #2: Life With The LionsThe way to approach this album is, not as a song-structured Beatle release, but as a typically demanding example of the British free jazz scene of the sixties and beyond. I am referring particularly to 'Cambridge 1969' which takes up half of the disc, recorded live in the city of that name with avant garde luminaries John Stevens and John Tchakai. The work is difficult, of course, and Yoko's ethnic squallings are an acquired taste to say the least. But there are some interesting textural effects between voice and guitar, and the entries of Stevens and Tchakai towards the end of the piece add a new dimension.
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 Wedding AlbumI have to admit that I only bought this album to complete my collection of Lennon CD's, and after playing Two Virgins & Life With the Lions I was not expecting much. I was, however, pleasantly surprised.
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 The John Lennon CollectionIf you don't already have some of John Lennon's music in your collection...then this is the one to pick up. Classic sing-a-long songs like "Instant Karma!","Mind Games","Imagine" and "Watching The Wheels" will keep you humming this album forever.
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 Live in New York City [LIVE]Not to be confused with Sometime in New York City, this live document was recorded at Madison Square Garden on August 30, 1972--Lennon's last full-length concert performance--but remained in the can until 1986. There's nothing definitive here (with and without the Beatles, Lennon did his best work in the studio), but it's still a real treat to hear passionate live renditions of underappreciated solo numbers such as "Woman Is the Nigger of the World," "Well Well Well," and "It's So Hard," along with righteous run-throughs of "Instant Karma" and "Cold Turkey."
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 Double Fantasy
[ORIGINAL RECORDING
REMASTERED]
[EXTRA
TRACKS]Strange as it seems now, the last album John Lennon released
in his lifetime was intended as a comeback, or rather as a
parting wave at retirement: "Watching the Wheels" and
"Beautiful Boy" celebrate the joys he found outside the star
system, and "(Just Like) Starting Over" is a slightly awkward
rocker about rejoining the domestic world that's also sort of
about rejoining the pop world. The studio-pro arrangements are
a little too slick, but Lennon rarely sounded happier.
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 Sometime In New YorkAgitprop political sensibilities have seldom made for great rock music, even in the
hands of a genius like John Lennon. Or perhaps we should say especially in the
hands of Lennon.
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 Walls And BridgesThe careful burnishing of John Lennon's daunting legend usually obscures one
telling fact: the former Beatle endured a long and troubling artistic slump in the
mid-'70s. Indeed, his five-year retirement/househusband phase may have been
one of the shrewdest career moves he ever made.
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 Rock 'N' RollExpectations were thus stratospheric when Lennon decided to
collaborate with Spector again on this 1975 collection of the
ex-Beatle's favorite boyhood rock & roll chestnuts.
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 Shaved FishJohn Lennon's solo hits have been repackaged numerous times since his tragic
death in 1980, but Shaved Fish--the only compilation actually released during his
lifetime--remains the strongest solo Lennon collection.
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 Imagine [SOUNDTRACK]It's virtually impossible to sum up John Lennon's entire career in 21 tracks, but this Yoko-approved soundtrack to Andrew Solt's 1988 documentary makes a fairly impressive try. Evenly split between his Beatles and solo periods, this collection paints a complex picture of a man whose music was by turns reflective ("In My Life," "Strawberry Fields Forever"), political ("Revolution, "Give Peace a Chance"), and harrowingly emotional ("Mother," "Jealous Guy"), but who also occasionally enjoyed a good old rock & roll rave-up ("Twist and Shout"). Of special interest to Lennon fans are a short rehearsal snippet from the Imagine sessions and a tentative acoustic demo of "Real Love," later brought to full-color life by the surviving Beatles for the second Anthology collection.
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Imagine / Give Peace Chance / Happy Christmas [ENHANCED] [CD-SINGLE] [IMPORT] 
Plastic Ono Band
Imagine
Mind Games [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED] [EXTRA TRACKS]
