31/01/2022
Tha making of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1970 Plastic Ono Band Album was the focus of a programme in the “Great Albums” series on Sky Arts Channel on Saturday afternoon. Interviews and vintage photographs and footage from the Lennon archive were used to reveal the process behind making the acclaimed recording. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were immersed in the late sixties and seventies counterculture and supported many causes from black civil rights to anti-militarism, although they didn’t join any particular political faction. They read the underground press, listened to alternative radio broadcasts and through their countercultural work, met with Gay Liberation activists in Britain and America. According to one account, members of the London branch of the Gay Liberation Front were invited to John and Yoko’s home to chat about politics. John is said to have played them an early demo version of his instantly recognisable classic “Imagine”. Since Lennon’s assassination on 8th December 1980, his widow Yoko Ono has kept alive his ideas of individualism, solidarity and world peace. On hearing that one of his songs had been misappropriated by a religious family to try to bully a gay child into turning straight, Ms Ono authorised a reworking of Lennon’s song to make it a celebration of samesex love.
