Who is Dr Winston O'Boogie? It was John Lennon's favorite pseudonym. If you should ever pick up Elton John's Greatest Hits Volume II, it has Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, which in my humble opinion is the best Beatles cover version ever done. Even John Lennon prefers Elton John's version. Why do I bring up Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds? Because if you look in the credits it says "featuring the reggae guitars of Dr Winston O'Boogie." But I digress...On October 5th, Capitol Records re-released John Lennon’s eight albums [all remastered, again…] to commemorate what would have been John’s 70th birthday. Capitol also put together [under Yoko Ono’s watchful eye] two compilations – the single disc Power to the People and the 4-disc Gimme Some Truth. Power to the People has the usual suspects on it, same as you’d find on Shaved Fish, Lennon Legend, or Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon. Gimme Some Truth is much more comprehensive – 72 songs divided into four themes: Working Class Hero [socio-political songs], Borrowed Time [songs about life], Woman [love songs], and Roots [rock and roll roots and influences].
Having looked over the track listing, I see that Gimme Some Truth has all of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, most of Imagine, most of Walls and Bridges, the only good song from Sometime in New York City [New York City] and six of the seven Lennon songs from Double Fantasy. However, there’s also a lot from the Rock ‘N” Roll [his collection of “moldie oldies”] - too much, if you ask me. But again I digress. I’ve been reading customer reviews of Gimme Some Truth and one reviewer’s comments stuck out. He opined that only a fragment of John Lennon’s music was represented on Gimme Some Truth and that it should contain one CD of music he created with the Beatles. I think he's right. Would there have been a John Lennon solo career were it not for the Beatles? He didn’t say what he would pick, but I took up the challenge. Here’s what I came up with that I could fit on one 79:57 CD.
The Weird and Innovative Songs – I'm Only Sleeping/Rain/Tomorrow Never Knows /A Day in the Life/I Am the Walrus/Hey Bulldog/Come Together/Across the Universe
Borrowed Time – Help!/Norwegian Wood [This Bird Has Flown]/In My Life/Girl/Nowhere Man/She Said She Said/Strawberry Fields Forever/I Want You [She’s So Heavy]/The Ballad of John and Yoko/Yer Blues
Working Class Hero – Revolution/All You Need Is Love
Beatlemania – A Hard Day’s Night/I Feel Fine/Ticket To Ride
I know, there some major titles missing, like Please Please Me, I Want to Hold Your Hand, Eight Days a Week, and Twist and Shout, just to name a few. Space on a CD is a premium. I deliberately avoided the love songs because there are so many of them. Plus, I like my list better. A good number of them were not "hits" per se. That was Paul McCartney's forte. I always preferred album tracks anyway.
Gimme Some Truth, and for that matter the entire Lennon solo catalog, boasts it uses the original mixes that John approved. This is an improvement over the remasters that came out between 2000 and 2005. I've heard the new remastered remixes and they're right, to a degree. The most noticeable difference is the album Imagine. The early remasters have a brightness to them that bring out all the high frequencies, especially the slide guitars of George Harrison, who played on five songs on Imagine. The highs sound great, but that comes at a cost - there's no bottom end. You can't hear the bass. Imagine from 2001 sounds like a well-recorded demo. The new mixes restore the balance between the highs and the lows and they sound much more like what you were used to if you bought the albums on vinyl back in the day. Walls and Bridges remixes from 2005 sound better than what is out now, but just a little. The old remixes sound like they have a bit more sparkle. But both versions (2005 and 2010) sound all right. Don't part with your 2005 mixes.
At any rate, if you don't want to stick a crowbar in your wallet and buy all the Lennon CDs, Gimme Some Truth is the way to go. With a couple of minor exceptions, this collection has all you need to know about John Lennon's solo career.
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