MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: JOHN LENNON - IMAGINE DELUXE, JOHN & YOKO - IMAGINE/GIMME SOME TRUTH (Blu-ray)

While the big excitement of Beatle fans this fall is the upcoming reissue of the White Album, all done up in Super Deluxe ways, this Lennon number will please a lot of fans too. The 1971 album includes his most-loved solo song, a bona fide classic, and certainly gets some votes as his best. It's a good cross-section of everything he did; there's protest, anger, love songs and unflinching self-examination. In addition to the title cut, it includes the lovely Jealous Guy, the raging Gimme Some Truth, and the bitter How Do You Sleep?, his scathing attack on ex-pal Paul, its pettiness saying more about the singer than the subject. Such was Lennon in the '70's, all raw nerves and honesty, warts (lots of them) and all.

A ton of work has gone into this major excavation of the tape vaults and sessions for Imagine, and the many hours of film shot at the same time. The Super Deluxe box has four CD's and two Blu-ray discs of audio, brand-new transfers from the master tapes, newly mixed to improve the clarity and separation, and highlight Lennon's voice. These "Ultimate" mixes are warm and close, one of the best examples of giving the impression you're right in the studio. There are no unheard out-takes from the sessions, but for bonus cuts, associated single cuts from the time period are here, including Power To The People, and a new mix of Happy Xmas (War Is Over) that is much less muddy that the version we're used to hearing each Christmas.

The rest of the music, whether it's the multi-disc box or the two-disc version, features various takes of the evolution of each song, from demos to early studio attempts to highlighted parts. That last feature is especially nice on the "Elements Mix" versions, which have such gems as just John's vocals for Oh My Love, only the wonderful strings for Imagine, and a piano-bass-drums track for Jealous Guy. There are some striking demos, including the first--ever Imagine, just John on piano, and Lennon and Yoko singing Oh Yoko! on holiday in Bahamas in 1969. The biggest fans will love all these insights, but there's several versions of each song, so you'll have to decide how much of a fan you are, and spend accordingly.

Also brand new is a Blu-ray (sold separately) that includes both films made from the footage collected during the sessions. Originally intending just to make a proto-video of the recordings, John and Yoko kept shooting little ideas each day, and released they had enough for what became the 70-minute movie Imagine. It featured no dialogue, just scenes with the two of them doing silly things, set to songs from his album, and Ono's current one, Fly. Like the great majority of folks, I'm no fan of Ono's music, so that's a distraction. So is the overall avant-garde approach, with scenes stretched out to fill the length of songs, including a segment of the two of them playing chess with all white pieces, an anti-war statement apparently, why do we fight when we're all the same? Being famous, the couple managed to convince Fred Astaire, Jack Palance and Dick Cavett to do cameos. George Harrison looks less impressed.

No wonder the footage was reclaimed into something far more interesting in the Andrew Solt-directed Gimme Some Truth, a Grammy-winner from 2000. This is a much better use of the film, as a straight-forward making-of about the Imagine album. And there is good stuff here, including the famous shot of Lennon singing Imagine at the white piano, and lots of really good studio performances. Even Phil Spector looks normal here, modestly producing instead of his notorious personality on display. It's actually Lennon with the bad behaviour, snapping at a confused, slow-acting engineer, letting that infamous prickly side get out. But the scene of him teaching session pianist Nicky Hopkins how Imagine goes, hearing him admit he likes that song the best of his new ones, well, that's history right there. Watch the original Imagine film once to remind yourself how off-putting the couple often were, and watch Gimme Some Truth a couple of times to soak in this unique time.