CA-35
Senior Member
I stole this from the WXPN web site. It's raw footage from a recording session of "How do you Sleep". It blew me way.
"It's the last week in May in 1971 at Ascot Sound Studios. John Lennon is singing and playing the same wood-finish Epiphone Casino electric guitar he played on 'Revolution'. A bearded George Harrison playing electric slide on John's pale blue Fender Strat. John and George's old friend Klaus Voormann is playing his deep hand-painted Fender Precision bass. Alan White (who would later join Yes) is playing his Ludwig silver sparkle drumkit. Nicky Hopkins is improvising on the red-top Wurlitzer Electric Piano, literally days before he leaves for Nellcôte to play on Exile on Main Street with The Rolling Stones. You are listening to the band playing 'How Do You Sleep' and all the hairs are standing up on the back of your neck."
"Surrounded by cigarette boxes and soda cans, the band in question seems to be at the end of a long night. Bassist Klaus Voormann looks practically asleep at his instrument. Meanwhile, Lennon’s vocals are almost gratingly dry, stripped of their usual studio processing, exposing every strain and rattle in his voice. But rather than weaken the track, this bone-dry approach draws out the song’s emotional sting to great effect. Lennon must have learned something from the experience, because he’d go on to fully embrace this minimal production style for his magnum opus, Plastic Ono Band. In a world of ultra-processed media presence, it’s a rare treat to see the artistic process unfolding more or less as it happened.
"It's the last week in May in 1971 at Ascot Sound Studios. John Lennon is singing and playing the same wood-finish Epiphone Casino electric guitar he played on 'Revolution'. A bearded George Harrison playing electric slide on John's pale blue Fender Strat. John and George's old friend Klaus Voormann is playing his deep hand-painted Fender Precision bass. Alan White (who would later join Yes) is playing his Ludwig silver sparkle drumkit. Nicky Hopkins is improvising on the red-top Wurlitzer Electric Piano, literally days before he leaves for Nellcôte to play on Exile on Main Street with The Rolling Stones. You are listening to the band playing 'How Do You Sleep' and all the hairs are standing up on the back of your neck."
"Surrounded by cigarette boxes and soda cans, the band in question seems to be at the end of a long night. Bassist Klaus Voormann looks practically asleep at his instrument. Meanwhile, Lennon’s vocals are almost gratingly dry, stripped of their usual studio processing, exposing every strain and rattle in his voice. But rather than weaken the track, this bone-dry approach draws out the song’s emotional sting to great effect. Lennon must have learned something from the experience, because he’d go on to fully embrace this minimal production style for his magnum opus, Plastic Ono Band. In a world of ultra-processed media presence, it’s a rare treat to see the artistic process unfolding more or less as it happened.