Song is available on Gimme Some Truth. The Ultimate Mixes
John Lennon’s timeless song “Mind Games,” with its famous refrain of “make love not war,” has been completely remixed from scratch and the video has been upgraded to HD, radically upgrading the sonic and video quality to present the song and video in the highest possible standard. The video, an incredibly charismatic narrative of Lennon greatly enjoying himself on a beautiful, sunny autumnal day in Central Park and throughout his adopted hometown New York City in November 1974, now features the new Ultimate Mix of the song, resulting in the video both looking and sounding better than ever with Lennon’s vocals front and center.
“Mind Games,” the title track of Lennon’s 1973 album of the same name, will be released via Capitol/UMe on a suite of beautifully presented collections of his most vital and best loved solo works titled Gimme Some Truth. The Ultimate Mixes., releasing October 9th on what would have been the beloved icon’s 80th birthday.
“[Mind Games] was a fun track because the voice is in stereo and the seeming orchestra on it is just me playing three notes with slide guitar. And the middle eight is reggae,” Lennon revealed in an interview. “Trying again to explain to American musicians what reggae was in 1973 was pretty hard, but it’s basically a reggae middle-eight if you listen to it.”
Discussing the message of the song he remarked, “Trying to possess somebody makes them go away. Every time you put your finger on it, it slips away. Every time you turn the microscope’s light on, the thing changes so you can never see what it is. As soon as you ask the question, it goes away. Peripheral vision is what it is. There’s no looking directly at it. Try to look at the sun. You go blind, right? Now that doesn’t mean you don’t have to work on it. Love is a flower, you gotta to let it grow.”
The new single follows last month’s release of the Ultimate Mix of “Instant Karma (We All Shine On.”
Executive produced by Yoko Ono Lennon and produced by Sean Ono Lennon, these 36 songs, handpicked by the pair, have all been completely remixed from scratch, radically upgrading their sonic quality and presenting them as a never-before-heard Ultimate Listening Experience.
Mixed and engineered by multi GRAMMY Award-winning engineer Paul Hicks, who also helmed the mixes for 2018’s universally acclaimed Imagine – The Ultimate Collection series, with assistance by engineer Sam Gannon who also worked on that release, the songs were completely remixed from scratch, using brand new transfers of the original multi-tracks, cleaned up to the highest possible sonic quality. After weeks of painstaking preparation, the final mixes and effects were completed using only vintage analog equipment and effects at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles, and then mastered in analog at Abbey Road Studios by Alex Wharton in order to ensure the most beautiful and authentic sound quality possible.
Gimme Some Truth – named for Lennon’s 1971 excoriating rebuke of deceptive politicians, hypocrisy and war, a sentiment as relevant as ever in our post-truth era of fake news, will be available in a variety of formats including as a Deluxe Edition Box Set that offers several different ways to listen to this engrossing 36 track collection with stunning new mixes across 2 CDs alongside a Blu-ray audio disc containing the Ultimate Mixes in Studio Quality 24 bit/96 kHz HD Stereo, immersive 5.1 Surround Sound and Dolby Atmos.
