portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Saturday, November 03, 2018

And on the very same day . . . . . . . . . . .

I think I had left John alone by now and despite growing up alongside the Beatles as if they were our additional family, brothers if you will, John had began to piss me off! [It's alright brothers can do that! Doesn't mean we don't love them any less actually] Yet this had to be checked out as soon as it came out still. Largely due to it being a one hit wonder and the rest of it being crap, we wondered indeed who's was playing those mind games on who!? The earlier nonsense of arguing in public between the 'boys' had hurt a lot of us and the sheer vitriol on that album ('Imagine') I consider a huge mistake. Imagine itself perhaps one of the most overrated songs of all time . . . . . "imagine no possessions  I wonder if you can?" patronising git! Well it was a heck of a sight easier having very little here in the UK as you sit in your multiple apartments collecting fur coats Johnny boy and as for the music your solo work speaks for itself as rhythm guitarists go, you can't really play or write music can you?!

The sheer shock of realising that Ringo can make a better album than John was astonishing . . . . . . hah! It's around this time Lennon starts seeing UFO's above the New York skyline . . .give the coke a break Johnny boy! So you spend the next 18 months in a drunken haze instead yeah that'll work. Yoko is clever you know? . . . . . . . 


On this day in music history: November 2, 1973 - “Mind Games”, the fourth solo album by John Lennon is released. Produced by John Lennon, it is recorded at The Record Plant in New York City from July - August 1973. The album is issued at the beginning of Lennon’s “Lost Weekend” period, in which he is separated from wife Yoko Ono for eighteen months. Though it receives only lukewarm reviews from critics, it performs dramatically better than the poorly received “Some Time In New York City” released the year before. The title track (#18 Pop) is the only single released from the album. The cover artwork is designed by Lennon himself, creating a collage from cutting and pasting oversized photos of his wife Yoko Ono on the front and back covers in the background, with much smaller pictures of himself (taken by photographer Bob Gruen) in the foreground.  The cover is a symbolic gesture of Lennon walking away from Ono during their eighteen month separation. The album is promoted in part by a humorous television commercial (and in radio spots) featuring Apple Records vice-president Tony King dressed as Queen Elizabeth II sitting on a throne holding a copy of the LP. There is also footage of Lennon waltzing with King that later turns up the documentary “John Lennon: Imagine” in 1988. The album is reissued in remixed and remastered in 2002 with three demo recordings as bonus tracks. The remixed version is also used for an audiophile CD and vinyl release by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab in 2004. The original mix is remastered and reissued in 2010, both as an individually available release, and as part of the “John Lennon Signature Box” box set. The vinyl LP release is remastered and reissued as a 180 gram LP in 2015, as part of Capitol/UMe’s “Back To Back” reissue series. The reissue restores the original LP packaging, and comes with an mp3 download card of the full album. “Mind Games” peaks at number nine on the Billboard Top 200, and is certified Gold in the US by the RIAA.
thanks to Jeff Harris' blog

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