Album Review
John Lennon’s Titanic ‘Mind Games’ Box Set Is a Work of Art Filled With Easter Eggs
The 40-pound, 13-inch cube makes the case that the former Beatle's fourth album is more than just a collection of songs
In October 1973, John Lennon — the man who seven years earlier whipped the Bible Belt into the Beatle Belt by proclaiming the Fab Four were “more popular than Jesus”— came off uncharacteristically reserved when discussing his latest LP. “The album’s called Mind Games, and it’s, well, just an album,” he told Melody Maker. “It’s not a political album or an introspective album. Someone told me it was ‘like Imagine with balls,’ which I liked a lot. … There’s no deep message about it.”
Bizarrely, he was downplaying the record, playing mind games with expectations. “Aisumasen (I’m Sorry),” “You Are Here,” and, of course, the dreamy title track are among his most introspective and introversible meditations, while the deep cuts reveal overtly political rallying cries in “Bring on the Lucie (Freda Peeple)” (the one that goes “Free the people, noooow/Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it noooow“) and “Only People” (kind of a jauntier “Give Peace a Chance”). Mind Games also contained the “Nutopian International Anthem” for what he and Yoko Ono described in the liner notes as “a conceptual country.” The “song,” accordingly, consisted of three seconds of silence — four-and-a-half minutes more concise than John Cage’s conceptual 4’33”. Deep messages were hiding everywhere.
For whatever reason, though, Mind Games wasn’t the juggernaut that “Imagine with balls” should have been. When the record came out, critics gave it a tepid response because it sounded to them like a course correction after the polemics of Some Time in New York City, the dyspeptic double-album that he and Ono released together a year earlier. Rolling Stone’s original Mind Games review even called the “Only People” lyric “a million heads are better than one, so come on, get it on” some of Lennon’s “worst writing yet.”
But over the past half a century, critics and listeners alike have warmed to the album, which is neither Lennon’s best nor worst LP. “Mind Games,” “Aisumasen,” “Intuition,” and “Out the Blue,” and several others have endured as classics. The songs are thoughtful and nuanced. Mind Games reflects Lennon’s anxious state of mind at the time, since he recorded it on the metaphorical Thursday evening before his “Lost Weekend,” and maybe that sense of displacement, the oncoming midlife crisis led him to undersell the album in his promotion and oversell his persona (see what happened later on Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats.)
Mind Games was always more than “just an album” and a thought-provoking, pricy new super deluxe box set reissue, produced by Sean Ono Lennon, makes the case that Mind Games has always been high art. The special edition takes the more widely available “Ultimate Collection” of Mind Games remixes and supersizes it into a 13-inch cube that fits inside a replica of Yoko Ono’s Danger Box. Sean Ono Lennon has also complemented the album with maps, games, puzzles, I Ching coins, a replica of Lennon’s circular You Are Here canvas, and other novelties (all detailed below). But the heart of the collection is Lennon’s album, presented several ways.
The Ultimate Collection box set, included as CDs, Blu-rays, and LPs in the deluxe cube, features each of Mind Games’ 12 tracks presented six different ways each, following in the footsteps of the similarly titled Ultimate editions that have come out in recent years for Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band and Imagine albums. The star here is the “Ultimate Mixes,” which reimagine each song in a wider stereo spectrum, effectively undoing Lennon’s Phil Spector fixation. Even though Mind Games was Lennon’s first solo album without the “Be My Baby” producer’s involvement, the final mixes came off claustrophobic and tinny, as if Spector’s Walls of Sound had closed in on him. On some songs, the original nearly mono mixes amplified the dreaminess of Lennon’s songwriting (especially on “Mind Games” and “One Day (at a Time)”) with their sibilant whispers and ghostlike flourishes but the new mixes place greater emphasis on Lennon’s voice and lyrics, often adding new depth to the songs.
The other discs include “Elemental Mixes,” which pair Lennon’s voice with pared-down instrumentation on each song, “Elements Mixes,” which are instrumentals comprising only one or two instruments at a time, “Evolution Documentaries,” which blend demos and session takes to show how Lennon built the songs from start to finish, “Raw Studio Mixes,” which occasionally skip the fadeout and show how he and the studio musicians in the Plastic U.F.Ono Band really jammed, and, finally, “Outtakes,” which is just how it sounds — different renditions of the songs than those that made the cut. If math is your mind game of choice, there are 72 entirely different renditions of every song in the collection — and 84 if you compare them to the originals. (Add 12 more if you have an Atmos surround sound setup at home.)
Lennon and Ono were two of rock’s avant-garde pioneers and that spirit lives in the variations. As you listen to hour-upon-hour of the songs, you start to hear them differently and wonder, “What is a song anyway?”
In the case of “Mind Games,” the idea of a song could include funk, judging from the bass and keyboards on the Elemental Mix, but also at the same time something resembling a funereal church service when you listen to the organ-only “Elements” mix, since Ken Ascher’s playing sounds doleful and sometimes like “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” The “Evolution” documentary of the song begins with Lennon alone, pounding away at a piano, intoning the hoary hippie maxim, “Make love not war, I know you’ve heard it before,” which he later buried deep in the finished song’s fadeout, cloaked deep behind his mind guerillas and the karmic wheel. The “Mind Games” outtake (officially take seven) features different lyrics (“‘Love’ is the answer that’s mirrored in the wind … ‘Yes’ is surrender, the messages are bold.”) And the song’s reggae middle-eight skanks harder than on the one Lennon settled on in ’73.
Similar revelations abound throughout the six discs. “Aisumasen (I’m Sorry),” Lennon’s second great apology for acting like a jealous guy (or maybe overzealous guy), sounds sadder and even more “sanpaku,” to use his word, with the Ultimate Mix’s wider sound spectrum since everything isn’t so pinched. On the Evolution documentary, you can hear him sing the words “I’ll ease your pain” in the same cadence as “Aisumasen” (and say “oh shit” when he screws up). He infuses a little Gene Vincent into “One Day (At a Time)” by singing “Be Bop A-Lula” in the “Evolution” documentary mix, and the outtake (take 18) finds him singing the song in his regular voice, not the falsetto Ono suggested. He attempts a bluesman growl on the acoustic guitar–and–bottle slide demo of his anti-Vietnam protest song, “Bring on the Lucie,” on the Evolution Mix, and the song’s reggae influence comes through more on the raw studio mix.
Some of the Ultimate Mixes reveal new depths to the better-known original mixes. “Intuition” sounds less mechanical, while David Spinozza’s acoustic guitar comes to the fore on “Out the Blue,” recalling both “Yesterday” and “Sexy Sadie,” since there aren’t fuzzy sounds cloaking his playing. Conversely, you also spot what the songs need to make them feel unique; the Elemental Mix of “Intuition” shows how it actually needs the original mix’s ear candy when stripped down to just piano and scratchy guitar. The Evolution Doc of “Only People” reveals it to have begun as a “Rocky Raccoon”-like story song, and you can hear how hard Lennon struggled to sing “I Know (I Know),” since his voice cracks on the Evolution Doc but sounds even better than the official version on outtake (take 4).
The Elements mix of “You Are Here,” which spotlights Sneaky Pete Kleinlow’s steel guitar, sounds tropical and quite pretty like the soundtrack to the sort of sunset Jimmy Buffett used to dream of. And the outtake of the song runs 10 minutes with no fadeout for an ultimate bliss-out. But since the album closes with the jagged and purposely ugly rocker “Meat City,” served rare of course, you quickly snap out of Kleinlow’s steel guitar spell, especially when you hear Lennon as producer begging drummers Jim Keltner and Rick Marotta for a “bloody backbeat” on the Evolution Doc.
The Atmos surround-sound mixes space out the music even more, allowing the backup singers, a typically angelic-sounding group called Something Different, more of the spotlight and room for Spinozza’s solos to dazzle. Improbably, the song that benefits most from an Atmos mix is “Meat City,” since Lennon’s rancid sound effects like a creepy, baby-like cry and avant-garde whooshing can finally swirl around “Meat City” to pungent effect. Plus, Lennon’s tossed-off closing soundbite, “Who is that and why are they doing those strange things?” moves all around you. It’s like you’re in the room with Lennon and his band, and his sense of humor with the song now makes perfect sense.
For longtime listeners who have the original mixes imprinted in their brains, the new mixes aren’t replacements so much as enhancements. These are not “Taylor’s Versions” of the songs and they’re most definitely not George Lucas “special editions,” where the original is no longer available, but something more akin to revisions akin to how Stephen King rereleased The Stand but didn’t change the story. (And, for the record, the “Nutopian International Anthem” sounds great in all the remixes. Just kidding. It’s still three seconds of silence each time but the Evolution Documentary, which presents the audio of Lennon and Ono’s April Fool’s Day press conference at the New York Bar Association where they held up a Kleenex as Nutopia’s flag. There’s both love and whimsy here.)
Sean Ono Lennon’s affection for the album is most obvious in the titanic, 40-pound limited-edition super deluxe edition, which really ought to include a kitchen sink in addition to everything else. Sean, who served as creative director in addition to producer for the release, crammed so many creative details into the box that it’s hard to process it all even in several sittings.
Your biggest clue that there’s more than going on in it than meets the eye, quite literally, is the inclusion of a blacklight to shine on pages of the books and maps to reveal hidden clues like you’re CSI’s chief musicologist. He’s hidden Easter eggs throughout the packaging and CDs and Blu-rays, including hidden songs and a decoder key for Lennon’s I Ching.
Lennon’s interest in arcana is on full display in the box set with photographs of his astrology library, palmistry prints, and other curiosities in the accompanying hardback book (which is a separate achievement from the box set since it contains well-researched quotes, rare photos, and Mind Games–related trivia) and several big posters, including one of Lennon’s I Ching chart and coins. Don’t forget only three years earlier, Lennon sang, “I don’t believe in I Ching” on “God” — the materials in this collection show otherwise.
Mysteries present themselves at almost every turn as you unpack the contents, which come stacked like a Jenga tower. Two of the most curious items are large maps, designed by Ed Fairburn, of Liverpool in the Forties and Tokyo in the Thirties to show how Lennon and Ono grew up, playing off the opening lyrics to “You Are Here”: “From Liverpool to Tokyo.” The ultraviolet light reveals numbers that correspond to places of interest (Strawberry Fields Gate, Stu Sutcliffe’s flat) on a separate key, kind of like matching up faces on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s. (And speaking of cover art, the way the Mind Games cover differs from record to record, with the cutout of Lennon in the foreground getting larger and smaller in the field is a nice touch. So is seeing the original photograph in which he stands in front of an Army recruitment poster, showing that since he cut that out of the image, he really didn’t want to get political this time.)
Other visuals include several postcards recreating art from the era, a Zoetrope cylinder, and two gorgeous picture discs with fractured art that moves like a Zoetrope when viewed through a phone camera. There are also tiles to form an acrostic around the words “Mind Games” based on clues hidden throughout the collection. One box, labeled “Citizen of Nutopia,” recreates the couple’s “Declaration of Nutopia” and includes a white flag, a stamp, buttons that say, “You Are Here” and “Not Insane.” There’s also a “Citizen of Nutopia” identity card with a QR code on it that leads to a meditation website, even though one of the rules of Nutopia is “no passports” (but it’s all in playful fun.) The artistic flourishes, and there are likely more than meet the eye, are what make the collection so expensive but also what make it special. The only thing to gripe about is the way it’s constructed so the vinyl stacks flat on top of each other, which may lead to warped LPs. You have to disassemble it to keep it in good shape.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the box set is that there’s even more music hidden throughout its contents. The LP encased in the Build Around It packaging, which sits below Ono’s Danger Box just like it does at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, features a hologram with astrological signs and I Ching symbols on it (compare those to the poster to solve one of the box set’s many puzzles) and when you play it, it contains warped, “Revolution 9”-style electronic experiments after playing “Mind Games” and “Meat City.” There’s maybe a little bit of “Rhapsody in Blue,” mangled by tape, on the holographic LP’s B side.
And if you can figure out how to find the other bonus tracks (shining the ultraviolet light in the book helps), you can hear the Beatles (minus Paul McCartney) jam on the Ultimate Mix of “I’m the Greatest” (as well as an Evolution Documentary for the song). There’s also another extended outtake of “You Are Here,” some more instrumental experiments, an Ultimate Mix of “Rock ‘n’ Roll People,” and an oldies jam with “Matchbox,” “That’s All Right Mama,” and “Heartbreak Hotel,” among other treats including video content.
The sum of the parts here add up to an impressive whole and show enough sides to Mind Games to prove it was more than “just an album.” In a 1975 interview, Lennon reflected on the album saying, “I had enough trying to be deep and [thought], ‘Why can’t you have some fun?'” Mind Games, as presented in this collection, is both fun and thoughtful, and the hypertextual detail throughout raises the bar for the box sets. Is it a time capsule? Art rock’s Ark of the Covenant? It all depends on how deep you dig into it. Luckily, there are maps to help you find your way.
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