Meet the Beatles for Real: recording studio

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Thursday, July 30, 2026

Lennon's Next Album (1971)

Lennon's Next Album

By Michael Watts

Melody Maker

July 31, 1971

"Commercial without compromise." That's how John Lennon summarizes his second solo album, Imagine, out on Apple in September. Lennon, who was in Britain last week as part of a major promotional campaign to push Yoko Ono's book Grapefruit, first published in 1964, but now out in a new edition, told the MM that the record is less of a personalized diary than the last one.

"It's better than the last one. It's not personal like that, but the technique and recording is a bit better," he said. "I mean, the last one was a good recording and well produced, but I think I've learned a bit more. I'm a lot lighter now. I'm not in the therapy. When I made it, I was feeling just happy, fairly happy, quite in love, and having a nice time."

The album was produced by Lennon, Ono, and Phil Spector at Lennon's Ascot home, where he has an eight-track studio, and also features George Harrison, Nikki Hopkins, Klaus Vormann, Alan White, Jim Keltner, King Curtis, and Bobby Keyes.

The tracks on side one: "Imagine," "Crippled Inside," "Jealous Guy," "It's So Hard", and "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier, Mama. I Don't Want to Die." Side two: "Give Me Some Truth", "Oh My Love". How Can You Sleep?" "How" and "Oh Yoko".

Three of the tracks have a definite political orientation: "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier," "Give Me Some Truth" and "Imagine", although that's a nice ballad. "Crippled Inside" also carries some kind of message, according to Lennon. One of the lines goes, "One thing you can't hide is when you're crippled inside." He describes it as a "double bass and a C and W and very gay."

His first solo album took 10 days to make. This one was cut in nine. He spent a week laying down the tracks at Ascot, and then put violins on four tracks during a two-day session in New York. These tracks, incidentally, were made in quadraphonic sound, although due to the scarcity of quad equipment, only a few albums will be put out using this technique; probably for friends.

The album is an example of Lennon's close affinity to the New York avant-garde. He was introduced some time ago by Yoko to members of the New York-based Fluxus, a group of artists founded by George Maciunas. When he took the tapes to New York, therefore, for the overdubbing, he utilized the electronic gadgetry of one of the members, Joe Jones, who has created a Tone-Deaf Music Company. This consists basically of a collection of musical instruments and electronic inventions, which play themselves rather on the lines of what Roger Spear or Bruce Lacy have created. Lennon used a number of toy violins made by Jones for the string overdubs.

"You just plug them in, and they all play. We got about 40 of these in the studio, and we recorded Yoko with them, and it's just fantastic. We used each set of instruments on eight tracks, and then recorded her voice with each individual set of instruments. We can jumble all those up, and then we did a sort of live show where me and Joe Jones were on the control box playing them. It's just a far-out scene."

Imagine, in fact, will be credited to John and the Plastic Ono Band with the Flux Fiddlers, while Yoko's new album Fly, which is being released at the same time, will be the Plastic Ono Band with the Joe Jones Tone Deaf Music Company.

September is going to be a busy month for the Lennons. They are hoping that a film incorporating shots of the recording sessions, the impromptu Zappa concert in New York, and the book signing event at Selfridges a fortnight ago will be shown on TV here.

The Edinburgh Festival will be opening too with a Lennon film, Apotheos, which was shown at Cannes. This is a 20-minute movie consisting of the slow ascent into the clouds of a gas balloon, made in England last winter. It features, as its soundtrack, the receding noises of the English countryside as the balloon rises. "Then you see a whole white vision for miles, and the dogs barking in the distance. It's beautiful," says Lennon.

His highest hopes, cinematically speaking, however, are reserved for a film called Erection, which is made up of still photographs taken over a period of nine months of a hotel being going up opposite the BEA terminal in London's Comwell Road. Said Lennon, "It's fantastic. I've just seen the rushes. It's gonna be the most famous film I ever do. I think it's gonna be one of them. That'll show them."

Monday, April 27, 2026

Working on their next masterpiece

April 27, 1966

Monday, March 9, 2026

Former Beatle Hard at Work (1981)

Former Beatle Hard at Work

By Patrick Riordan

Knight-Ridder Newspapers

March 8, 1981

Just past the white-washed bridge not far from the carpenter shop, up the steep unmarked road that turns off to the right between the two ancient mango trees, is the sign Paul McCartney drives past every day about 1pm local time: Air Studios, Montserrat Ltd, strictly no admittance, except by prior arrangements.

Beefy guards from Professional Security Group Inc of New York stand watch over McCartney's personal safety and his 4.6 tons of musical luggage. From the looks of it, some secret project may be going on. Some people speculate that there will be a Beatles reunion record in memory of John Lennon, who was shot to death December 8.

"Not so," says George Martin, the legendary electronics engineer who was dubbed the fifth Beatle for his masterful recording techniques for the rock group during the 1960s. Martin, who happens to own AIR Studios, indicated the recording project is a McCartney album without the former Beatles group Wings.

Their tribute to John is in themselves," Martin said in an interview at the studio on Sunday. "To go and make a tribute album is cashing in, I think, on John's death."

Fueling the Beatles reunion rumor, were the presence recently of ex-Beatle Ringo Starr for a recording session, and reports that the third living former Beatle, George Harrison, may record some tracks for the album later in London.

The album that McCartney and Martin are working on will be the first they have produced together since Abbey Road, the last Beatles album. "We're trying to get back to something we had before," Martin said. "The album is expected to be completed by the end of March and is to be released later this year."

Except for a minor car accident that McCartney had with an Associated Press photographer recently, his month in the British West Indies has gone smoothly. He has declined to be interviewed by the newspaper and television reporters who converged on the isolated island after rumors began circulating earlier this month that the surviving Beatles were reuniting for an album.

Someone who is close to McCartney and who asked not to be named said that the singer-songwriter's only complaint has been the lack of wind surfers on the island. He waterskis a lot in Woodlands Bay.

McCartney drives to the studio from his rented villa on the island's Northwest coast. The villa is a converted monastery overlooking the nearby island of Redonda. He works hard in light of the February 28 deadline to put down his tracks for the album. "They start about 1pm, and they don't get out of the studio until midnight," a spokesman for AIR studio said of McCartney and Martin.

Locally, McCartney's visit inspired only moderate interest. While much of the outside world has hung on every word of a possible Beatles reunion, local folks still think last year's visit by the soul-oriented group Earth, Wind & Fire was more exciting.

Montserrat is a study in isolation, a crown colony that cultivates the image and, in large measure, seems to achieve the reality of the perfect, unspoiled Caribbean island. Few planes arrive. Indeed, one of the attractions of the 39-square-mile paradise, first colonized by the Irish, is that the difficulty of getting here discourages low-rent tourism.

No jets can land here to disgorge economy fair vacationers. The aircraft of choice is the British Norman tri lander, a tri-motor airplane with two propellers on the wings and a third mounted on the tail, known locally as the Mini Concord. It is the workhorse of Leeward Island air transport (LI A T), the only airline servicing the island. Most tourists arrive from Antigua, about 50 minutes away by propeller plane. Landing is a thrill. Planes fly low over the waves directly toward a sheer rock cliff until they're within a few 100 yards of land.