John Lennon Reimagined

The Making of Gimme Some Truth. The Ultimate Mixes

- By Matt Hurwitz

WHEN YOKO ONO AND SEAN Lennon set out to create a music collection to honor the late John Lennon’s 80 th birthday, they knew that another greatest hits collection wasn’t something fans needed or wanted. Instead, together with the core team that crafted 2018’s highly successful Imagine The Ultimate Collection box set, they delivered John Lennon. Gimme Some Truth. The Ultimate Mixes. Released by Capitol/UMe on October 9, Lennon’s actual birthday, this box set includes not only new stereo mixes drafted from the original multitrack session tapes, but also high-resolution 24-bit/96kHz stereo, 5.1 surround, and Dolby Atmos mixes of each, available on an additional Blu-ray audio disc in the album’s deluxe box set (reviewed on page 72).

Ono had begun the Ultimate Collection series with Lennon’s 1971 classic, Imagine, which not only had powerful new mixes of the album tracks created by triple-Grammy–winning engineer Paul Hicks, but session outtakes and fascinating “Evolution” audio montages by Sam Gannon detailing the recording development of each song. The series will continue with Lennon’s first solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, which is currently in the works.

For this release, though Hicks would once again be called on to create new mixes, they differ, in a way, from those on the Ultimate Collection sets. “The Ultimate sets are really about being the ultimate exploration of the album as a deep listening experience, to allow fans to not only be entertained, but educated and inspired,” explains Ono’s compilation producer, Simon Hilton. “For this package, we knew it would include the Ultimate Mixes, but this time, this was purely focused on master takes. We weren’t going to explore all of that peripheral material.”