Rabbit Holes #11: Chasing John Lennon’s Mind Games

After a wild decade in the biggest pop music group ever, John Lennon’s post-Beatles years were spent in protest, in various kinds of therapy, in immigration court, and in search of a new musical identity. He had been a musician since age 16 and a superstar since his early 20s. He was only in his 30s.

By summer 1973, when Lennon’s fourth album, Mind Games, was recorded at New York’s Record Plant Studios, the turbulence of Lennon’s life seas was at gale force. He was separating from Yoko Ono and starting a 16-month relationship (consummated at Ono’s suggestion) with their shared administrative assistant, May Pang. The Nixon Administration was targeting Lennon and Ono for deportation because of their left-wing political activities, mostly focused on the Vietnam War.

The world of pop music had changed. His former bandmates were thriving to varying degrees. Lennon had some hit singles, and his first two solo albums had charted relatively well, but then he and Ono made the stridently political Some Time in New York City, a bust that cemented a stereotype of Lennon as angry radical protester rather than lovable ex-Beatle and as less commercially successful than the others.

“I woke up and a year had gone by with no album,” Lennon told an interviewer in mid-1973. Ono was finishing her fourth, Feeling the Space (footnote 1). Lennon was impressed with the studio musicians she had gathered. He recruited the same band, more or less, for an album of his own. He decided to ditch overt protest material—to transition, in his words, from “being a manic political lunatic … back to being a musician again.” (footnote 2)

In a few weeks, Lennon pulled together the 12 songs that would become Mind Games. Jim Keltner did most of the drumming, with Rick Marotta on two tunes. Gordon Edwards was on bass, Dave Spinozza on guitar, Ken Asher on keyboards, “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow on pedal steel, and Randy Brecker on sax. The album was recorded in five weeks of July and August, 1973, and released in November.

Mind Games is the latest Lennon solo album to receive Ultimate Collection reissue treatment from Universal Music Group. The series producer, Simon Hilton, worked with Ono and Sean Ono Lennon. The package includes stereo, 5.1 DTS, and Atmos mixes. “Elemental” mixes—stripped-down versions that emphasize Lennon’s voice—fill one CD. “Elements” mixes fill another; these arrangements focus on something the producers found exceptional in each tune—for instance Kleinow’s steel guitar work in “Tight A$.” Another CD contains “Evolution” mixes,” little documentaries that piece together how each track evolved from demo to final master. Also included are out-takes and “Raw Studio Mixes.” All that remixing was done by the team of Paul Hicks, Sam Gannon, and Rob Stevens.

All told, this Mind Games Ultimate Collection spans six CDs, two Blu-ray discs, and a 136-page hardcover book containing a deep dive into the album, its songs, and the lives of its people. Also included are some neat physical artifacts: reproductions of promotional postcards issued by Capitol Records, a fold-out poster showing versions of the cover art, and a “Citizen of Nutopia” identity card. (Nutopia was a fake “nation” that Lennon and Ono announced at a news conference/performance art event. Mind Games contains a track titled “Nutopian International Anthem,” nothing more than a few seconds of silence.) What I wrote in my review of Plastic Ono Band Ultimate Collection is true here also: The Mind Games Ultimate Collection is an elephant to eat in small bites.

How does this pachyderm taste? Mind Games is an album of the 1970s, much more so than Lennon’s first two albums, and the contrast with Beatles music is greater. Here, Lennon is baring cracks in his personal life—for example, addressing “Aisumasen (I’m Sorry)” directly to Ono—but at the same time, he’s looking to fit himself into rock and pop music circa 1973.

The title track works well: “Mind Games” (backed by “Meat City”) was the only single release. In the book, Ono comments that the lyrics are more relevant a half-century later. “I don’t think in those days people knew they were playing mind games anyway.” Lennon kept some politics in the music, toned down and pop-catchy, as in “Tight A$” and “Bring on the Lucie (Freda Peeple).” He discusses his feelings and thoughts in “One Day at a Time,” “Intuition,” and “You Are Here.” The album ends with “Meat City,” his jagged appreciation of New York, perhaps written to stiffen his spine as he battled deportation. (He finally won his case in 1976 and was US-based until he was murdered in 1980.)

The Ultimate mixes achieve the goals of modernizing the tonality and beat-punch and bringing Lennon’s voice out front. I prefer these sonics to the 2010 HD Signature Box remaster and to an old Mobile Fidelity CD I own. The older versions are muddier to varying degrees, and the 2010 version is light in the low end.

The Elemental mixes are ear-opening because they show how well most of these tracks stand up as simple songs, with tight structures, nice musical hooks, and interesting lyrics. The Elements mixes were good for a listen, but I doubt I’ll return to them often; same with the Evolution mixes. Raw studio mixes and outtakes are probably of interest only to the hardest of hardcore fans.

The surround mixes are surprisingly unadventurous. They expose detail by spreading out the sound, though I thought the set’s new stereo mixes were clear enough. The songs weren’t as trippy/dreamy as earlier Lennon solo efforts, so perhaps there’s less call for bouncing song elements around.

The relevant question regarding this Ultimate Collection set is, how much does it interest you? The many versions of each song, and the extensive hardcover book notes will take you to the bottom of the rabbit hole. Are you in for that trip?

Footnote 1: Ono’s 1973 album is worth a listen because it’s mostly the same musicians and production crew as Mind Games but with her songs and singing. It stands in contrast.

Footnote 2: All Lennon and Ono quotes are taken from the hardcover book accompanying the Mind Games Ultimate Collection.

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