John Lennon - Some Time in New York City - Alternate Version (1972)

For some reason, I've posted very little music from John Lennon's solo career so far. I have lots of albums planned, with many of them basically ready to go (minus tidying up and making the cover art). But then again, there's tons of music I plan on posting and I can't get to it all at once. But this particular album has come to the front of my posting priorities due to a song edit a friend of mine made. I'll explain more about that below.

"Some Time in New York City," released in 1972, was John Lennon's third proper solo album. His first two solo albums, "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band" and "Imagine," were critical successes, and did reasonably well commercially. Both have made it on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the top 500 albums of all time. So expectations were high for this, his third album. But it was considered a compete bust. One reviewer at the time called it "artistic suicide." Even decades later, a reviewer for Uncut Magazine said it was "a contender for the worst LP by a major musical figure" in all of music history. That's pretty bad! Sales were so bad that Lennon was stunned and he suffered songwriter's block for about a year.

So this is an album that's ripe for an alternate version, which I'm making here. In my opinion, there are three reasons this album did so poorly, both critically and commercially. First, it was a very political album, with every original song expressing radical leftist political opinions. The general public wasn't ready for that. 

Second, it wasn't really a John Lennon album, but instead a John Lennon and Yoko Ono album. Three of the songs on the first album were written and sung by Ono, and she sang some lead vocals on some of the other songs as well. People really didn't like that, especially since many at the time blamed Ono for the break-up of the Beatles. (In retrospect, she probably played some role in that Lennon was having more fun making music with her than with the Beatles, but there were many other factors that came to a head, especially financial ones, and basically everyone in the band being sick of everyone else.)

Third, it was a double album, and while the first album was made up of conventional songs, the second album consisted of live musical jams, and it was pretty terrible. It was a lot like the third album of George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass," consisting of jams that most people played just once. Except it was even worse since while Ono sang conventionally on the first album, she did her unusual screaming style over most of the jams. For many people, it was painful and unlistenable.

So here are all the things I did to improve the album:

1) I got rid of nearly all of the second album of jams. I'm one of those people who find it painful and unlistenable. The only song I kept from it was "Well (Baby Please Don't Go)." Unlike pretty much everything else on the second album, this is an actual song. It's a cover of an obscure song by the Olympics, from 1958.

2) Speaking of that song, "Well (Baby Please Don't Go)," I'm using a version created a couple of days ago by my musical friend Lil Panda. He, like me, has been tinkering with the audio editing programs that have advanced greatly in recent years, thanks to AI technology. Both he and I had previously tried to get rid of Ono's screaming from some songs, but found it impossible. But Lil Panda figured it out: it turns out that Ono's screams are so unusual that they're interpreted by the AI program he uses as a saxophone! Unfortunately, Ono's wailing was all over this song. But the saxophone filter got rid of at least 90 percent of it. Thanks, Lil Panda! Note also, that Lil Panda used the version of this song that appeared on the Frank Zappa album "Playground Psychotics." It's the exact same performance as the one on "Some Time in New York City," recorded at a concert in the Fillmore East in New York City in June 1971, but it's about a minute longer.

3) For the first album of conventional songs, I got rid of two out of three songs that were mostly Ono's, "Sisters, O Sisters," and "We're All Water." For this album, Ono actually sings conventionally most of the time, except for about half of "We're All Water." By and large, she did decently when she stuck to conventional singing. It's a far cry from her screaming on the second album of live jams (and some of "We're All Water"). So these two songs aren't terrible. I just don't think they're that strong. Plus, let's face it, nearly everybody puts on an album like this to hear Lennon songs, not Ono songs. 

4) I kept one mostly Ono song, "Born in a Prison." I consider it the best of the Ono songs on the album. It's not fantastic, but it's as good as a couple of the Lennon ones. However, I made a slight edit. Lennon sings backing vocals on the choruses. I used the same editing tool Lil Panda used for the "Well" song to separate out Lennon's vocals from Ono's. Then I boosted his vocals some. I couldn't do more because the two voices didn't completely separate. But you can at least hear him better. That's why this is the other song that has "[Edit]" in the title.

5) I used a live version of "Luck of the Irish." To be honest, I made the alternate version of this album years ago, except for the two recent song edits mentioned above, so I have long forgotten why I chose that version. I listened to both this live version and the studio version again today, and I didn't see much difference at all. Both versions have lead vocals by Lennon and Ono in different parts, and even Ono sang very competently in a live setting. In case you're curious, this version was recorded during a concert/rally on behalf of political activist John Peel (who was imprisoned at the time), that took place University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, in December 1971.

6) For "Angela," I used the "Ultimate Mix" that came out on the archival album "John Lennon: Gimme Some Truth" that was released decades later. It brings up organ playing that was completely buried in the original album version, and it has less reverb on it.

7) Finally, I added the song "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" to the end of the album. This was a hit single that was released in December 1971, about six months prior to the release of this album. It was only a minor hit in the U.S. because it was released very late in the holiday season. But it was held back a year in Britain to maximize Christmas sales, and it made it to Number Four in the singles charts there. Since then, it has become a Christmas standard, being rereleased many times, and going back into the charts many times around Christmas. It has been widely covered as well. Being a classic, hit song, it really elevates the whole album, and ends it on a high note. Note that the 2005 reissue of the album included it at the end as well.

8) All the other songs are the same versions as on the original "Some Time in New York City" double album.

Ultimately, only so much can be done with this alternate version. This album is still a step down from the greatness of "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band" and "Imagine." Some of the songs are a bit slapdash and generic musically. There was nothing I could do about the radical leftist political content, since that's a key part of every song. (Even "Happy Xmas" has an anti-Vietnam War message woven into it.) But being a political progressive myself, I'm in pretty close agreement with most of the political sentiments expressed here anyway. Lennon was going through a political phase and got a little carried away with his enthusiasm at times, but I think most of his political points have been proven right with the passage of time. 

Consider, for instance, the song "John Sinclair," complaining about how Sinclair got sentenced to ten years in prison for being caught with two joints of marijuana. Not only was Sinclair released early due to political pressure (and largely due to Lennon's high-profile involvement, it seems), but now marijuana is legal in half of the U.S. states as I write this in 2025, and medical marijuana is legal in many more. The ten-year prison sentence seems absurd in retrospect.

This album is 40 minutes long. The original double album version is 90 minutes long.

01 Woman Is the Nigger of the World (John Lennon)
02 Attica State (John Lennon)
03 Born in a Prison [Edit] (John Lennon & Yoko Ono)
04 New York City (John Lennon)
05 Luck of the Irish (John Lennon & Yoko Ono)
06 Sunday Bloody Sunday (John Lennon & Yoko Ono)
07 John Sinclair (John Lennon)
08 Angela [Ultimate Mix] (John Lennon & Yoko Ono)
09 Well [Baby Please Don't Go] [Edit] (John Lennon with Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention)
10 Happy Xmas [War Is Over] (John Lennon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WAUDdste

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/Dhlj0Bk5HcZ5Ofv/file

For the album cover, I wanted something similar to the official cover, but different. Luckily for me, the cover was done in the style of a newspaper front page, with song lyrics instead of articles. There were two newspaper pages included in the album art to get all the lyrics, so I just kept the title parts and used lyrics from the second page for the rest.