“She is talking through him,” says Dan Richer, one of the co-workers of John Lennon before the camera of Michael Epstein. The filmmaker puts it back together in the documentary John and Yoko the months of work that gave rise to Imagine through unreleased recordings taken at Tittenhurst Park, the country house in Ascot where the couple is isolated to burn the disc.
Published in 1971, the message of peace he sends with his songs rose with more strength than ever when Lennon was assassinated December 8, 1980. In addition to crown again the charts, it became his legacy more recognizable.
The film, which has the approval and participation of Yoko Ono, claimed the authorship of the widow of Lennon in a good part of that is the work more successful in the solo career of the musician. Ono achieved official recognition as coatuora of the song in the summer of 2017, with hardly any media coverage.
he recognized the own Lennon days before dying in a radio interview on the BBC with Andy Peebles: “(…) Imagine, For example, should have been credited as a song from Lennon and Ono because she created a good part of his letter and his message. At that time I was much more selfish than I am now and I avoided to mention all of their contributions”. Ono only appeared until the moment accredited along with Lennon in one of the ten songs on the album, Oh my love.
One of the images previously unpublished from the process of creation of Imagine that can be seen in the documentary, George Harrison, John Lennon and Yoko Ono
John and Yoko goes further and points to the artist as the author of a good part of the disk, and not just of the song. “Without taking merit to the musical brilliance of Lennon, many of the ideas that build the whole project from it. I was involved in every aspect of the disk and created a new language for him. It is obvious that the Lennon of previous songs like I Am The Walrus, or In My Life is not the same as the Imagine. Without the shadow of Lennon, it could have been a Janis Joplin,” says Epstein over the telephone.
The documentary, broadcast on Movistar + from 19 December, was commissioned by the uk channel 4 Michael Epstein, candidate for the Oscar for The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996), and that he had already signed in 2010 a documentary about the life of Lennon in New York. In him alone involved the direct witnesses of what happened during the recording of Imagine, as Julian Lennon and photographer David Bailey.
from the noise
The Kaçak İddaa couple met in 1966, at a gallery in London in which she, an artist already well-known, exhibited their works. Their relationship became public shortly after and, from that moment, the musician went from being an idol universally recognized a man divorced and challenged. His image continued to deteriorate when, in 1969 returned to Elizabeth II, the Medal of Member of the Order of the British Empire, which had granted four years earlier along with their fellow group members.
the move to Tittenhurst Park in 1971 was an escape from the noise that surrounded them, and a chance to recover to Julian, son of Lennon, with whom he had lost contact for some time after the scandal-loving. “Was your response to everything that had happened in their lives in the previous years. Found a place in which to take shelter and in which to create something beautiful,” says the documentary’s director. It was also the venue where we took the last photos of The Beatles.
#OTD 1969 #TheBeatles turned up at Tittenhurst Park-John’s house in Ascot) for what turned out to be their last photo shoot together pic.twitter.com/G4CHcqP8ic
— The Beatles (@thebeatles) August 22, 2017
In the huge field house, the british gathered to his people of trust, among which was his excompañero band George Harrison, to build a mysterious project that I end up being Imagine. His first album away from The Beatles had been a sales failure a year before, so it was decided to maintain the political message with a sound much more commercial.
“it was Also idea of Ono rolling everything that happened in the home and then releasing a film in 1972 relating to the project,” recalls Epstein. John and Yoko incorporates part of the unpublished material that was never used in it.
what Your relationship would be as controversial now as it was in his time? “I hope that we have evolved and no longer look at a witch’s manipulative to a strong woman with a voice of his own. In fact, they had something that to see that now we get to understand that a man and a woman can be partners on equal terms”, defends the filmmaker.
In the documentary, Ono claim to your authorship of a good part of Imagine: “Looking at it with perspective, I think that John and I met to do this song”.
