John Lennon/Yoko Ono: Unfinished Music No. 2 - Life With the Lions [SECRETLY CANADIAN]

Why you'll love it

This Secretly Canadian and Chimera Music reissue includes a download code with two previously unheard bonus tracks. Side one, "Cambridge 1969," is the first performance by the couple ever put on record.

This edition

• Download code with two bonus tracks

About the album

John Lennon and Yoko Ono meant the Unfinished Music series as a record of their life together. With Ono's book Grapefruit in mind, the idea was that listeners would finish the music in their own heads. This second volume came out in May 1969 on Zapple, Apple's experimental sub-label, and its title tips its hat to the BBC radio show Life with the Lyons.

"Cambridge 1969" was taped on March 2, 1969, at Lady Mitchell Hall, where Ono had been invited to play a free jazz concert and Lennon persuaded her to go ahead. Side two was recorded at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London in November 1968 and gathers "No Bed for Beatle John," "Baby's Heartbeat," "Two Minutes Silence" and "Radio Play," a few of which first appeared on a flexi disc given away with Aspen magazine.

It's Fluxus thinking applied to the life of a very famous couple, and Lennon summed the series up as an invitation to make your own music. We tried. Customers keep asking us to put this back on instead.

Also at Kops: more John Lennon on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Secretly Canadian / Chimera Music (cat# SC290), a reissue of the 1969 album.