Notes

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Piano Demo fall 1970

After the emotionally exhausting Plastic Ono Band writing and recording sessions, it was time for John to exhibit a lighter compositional touch. Perhaps showing the strain from the amount of single-minded effort that went into that LP, John in contrast seemed to be all over the place with this batch of songs an noodlings recorded in the late fall of 1970 at Tittenhurst Park estate. A rare glimpse into a single Lennon piano demo session, Compositions reveals an artist trying to find his way to what would eventually become the Imagine LP. While John's not in the best voice of his career, it's still a fascination listening experience, and has never before appeared in its entirety.

The tape begins with "Make Love Not War." This song did not appear in the next LP Imagine, but in rewritten form as the title track of 1973's Mind Games, after being combined with a song heard later on the tape, "I Promise." Both of these sound much better than the versions released officially on The John Lennon Anthology in 1998. "I'm the Greatest" also emerged in '73, but not as a Lennon track; it was the leadoff song on Ringo Starr's Ringo LP. At this point in 1970, the song was in embryonic form and had more John-oriented references than it would later have upon being handed over to the ringed one.

The next three songs all showed up the next year on Imagine. "How?" is featured as a false start, then with a complete run-through. The first pass here is a very tentative attempt with John singing in the plural. "Child of Nature" was on its way to being "Jealous Guy," but it still held on to its 1968 "Beatles in India" origins at this point. There are three false starts prior to the full performance. Next comes "Oh Yoko!" On Imagine, it is a song of joy to his wife. Here, it sounds more like a dirge in the vein of "Mother." More confident takes appear later in the tape.

Following these three eventually issued tunes, the next two songs went unreleased in John's lifetime. A track usually give the title "Sally and Billy" is up first in this duo, featured in a series of breakdowns; John never really gets the song down in this try, but he'll give it another attempt at the Dakota in 1976. Next is "Rock and Roll People," a song not released by John until the posthumous Menlove Ave. compilation in 1986, for good reason!