Fans can listen to nine tracks from the forthcoming Power to the People reissue and more
Legendary songwriter, singer, musician and peace activist, John Lennon, would have been 85 today (Thurs, Oct 9th) and his remarkable life, timeless music and extraordinary legacy is being celebrated around the world with fan-led events and performances, including the Strawberry Fields Memorial in Central Park, New York City, plus an advance global listening party for Power To The People, the relighting of Yoko Ono Lennon’s Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavik, Iceland, the launch of Disc Two of the online text adventure Escape To Nutopia, and more.
The John Lennon Estate will be hosting a free global listening party today at 8 pm BST/3 pm ET/noon PT at citizenofnutopia.com, a community hub and interactive art project celebrating the world of John & Yoko, for fans to listen together to nine tracks from the forthcoming John & Yoko release, Power to the People. Fans will be able to interact in real time with other fans across the world, and everyone will be represented on a world map, mirroring the sense of togetherness and unity that underpinned the original concert.
The tracks featured will include three live performances from the iconic 1972 One To One concert, John’s only full-length performance after The Beatles, and six studio and live performances spanning the breadth of the expansive box set.
Immediately following the listening party, Escape To Nutopia will launch Disc Two, the much-anticipated second installment of the immersive, interactive fiction game that puts players into the mind of John Lennon.
Partly inspired by text-based computer games like Infocom’s “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and the pioneering “Colossal Cave Adventure,” the experience digs deeply and authentically into John & Yoko’s home life, based on thousands of hours of archival research and multimedia evidence. It plays with the nature of perceived realities, memory, time, dreams and illusions whilst remaining deeply grounded in their art, music and history.
The game is a collaboration between the John Lennon Estate and Loud Beings.
Imagine Peace Tower by Yoko Ono Lennon on Viðey, in Reykjavik, Iceland, will be lit for the 19th time on Thursday, October 9th at 8 pm BST/3 pm ET/noon PT. A peaceful ceremony will be held on the island to celebrate the event. Icelandic songwriter Una Torfadóttir will perform music beside the Imagine Peace Tower, and the Mayor of Reykjavik, Heiða Björg Hilmisdótt, will give a speech. It is customary that as soon as the tower is lit, the song “Imagine” will be played, and people will have the opportunity to take photos.
The Imagine Peace Tower is an outdoor artwork by Yoko Ono, built on Viðey in 2007 and dedicated to John Lennon. The tower is lit annually on Lennon’s birthday, October 9th, and shines until December 8th, the day of his passing. The artwork is a symbol of Ono and Lennon’s continuing work for world peace. The tower is in the form of a wishing well, with the words “Imagine Peace” inscribed on it in 24 languages.
On October 10th, the day after John’s 85th birthday, Capitol/UMe will release Power to the People, a massive 12-disc box set produced by Sean Ono Lennon and his five-time Grammy Award-winning production team, that chronicles and celebrates John & Yoko’s political activism and their early years in New York City.
The centerpiece of the collection is the One To One Concert that took place on August 30, 1972, at Madison Square Garden in NYC, featuring John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band with Elephant’s Memory and Special Guests. These two performances were John’s only full-length concerts after leaving The Beatles.
The exhaustive 123-track box set features 90 never-before-heard and previously unreleased tracks, including a wealth of unreleased demos, home recordings, jam sessions, live cuts, unique mixes and much more. All tracks have been completely remixed and re-engineered from the original analog tapes by Paul Hicks and Sam Gannon, using brand new HD multitrack transfers by Rob Stevens, with the mixes mastered by Alex Wharton at Abbey Road Studios. The set was overseen by compilation producer and book author Simon Hilton and co-designed and art directed by Sean, Simon and Liz Hirsch.
Power to the People offers an aural time capsule of John and Yoko’s first NYC era, when they traded Tittenhurst Park, their estate in Ascot, England, for a small apartment located at 105 Bank St. in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, and includes the music they were inspired to make during a time of great civil unrest and the deeply unpopular Vietnam War.
Several videos have been released ahead of the release of Power to the People, including previously unreleased live performances of “Come Together,” “Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)” and “Well Well Well” from the One To One Concert, plus “Honey Don’t” – a home recording filmed at the St. Regis Hotel in New York and “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” a powerful new video that decries the cost – both human and financial – of war, political violence and gun deaths, set to the new remix of the song. It poignantly ends with the reminder that more than 1.5 million people have been killed by guns in the U.S.A. since John Lennon was shot and killed on December 8, 1980. For release day, the video for a previously unreleased performance of “Imagine,” John & Yoko’s powerful international call for unity and peace, from the One to One Concert, will be released.
