JOHN LENNON

Imagine: The Super Deluxe Edition 8/10 Lennon’s landmark second album, now with six-pack Bulking up a classic 10-song album lasting a near-perfect 39 mins and 29 seconds into a six-disc boxset is some logistical achievement, but Yoko Ono and her team have pulled it off via a painstaking dig in the archives conducted with the forensic dedication of an archaeologist excavating the ruins of Troy. A crisp-sounding new stereo remix of the original LP comes as standard. Then we get demos, rehearsals, “elemental” versions featuring strings or vocals only, 5.1 Surround mixes and some intriguing “audio montages tracking the development of every song”. Chuck in a few non-album singles such as “Power To The People”, “God Save Oz” and “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”, offered in various versions and formats, and the box starts to fill up nicely. Unsurprisingly, Lennon selected the best takes for release at the time. There are no ‘new’ songs and fewer of the truly revelatory moments that we found in The Beatles’ Anthology series or even the John Lennon Anthology, which collected the best of the demos, outtakes and other unreleased solo material in a four-disc box in 1998. However, it is a cornucopia of delights for audiophiles and there are more than enough quirks and insights to make it invaluable to even the most casual Lennon fan, from the sound of John clearing his throat at the start of the “Imagine” demo and an agonisingly cathartic “Jealous Guy” (marked take 29) on which his voice almost breaks, to an extended blues jam on “How Do You Sleep” and a heartfelt acoustic campfire strum through “Oh Yoko”. Extras: 8/10. Hardcover book (120 pages) on the creation of the album and a DVD/Blu-ray combining the restored “Imagine” and “Gimme Some Truth” films.