Today marks the birthday of the legendary John Lennon. His indelible life and legacy is currently being honoured with celebrations and events around the globe, both physically and virtually.
To coincide with what would have been John Lennon’s 78th birthday the iconic 1971 album Imagine, featuring Lennon’s famous plea for peace and unity that imagines “all the people sharing all the world,” is being celebrated and intimately explored with a comprehensive box set, Imagine – The Ultimate Collection.
The original Imagine album has been faithfully remixed from the ground up by Paul Hicks at Abbey Road Studios under the supervision of Yoko Ono Lennon. Hicks utilised high-definition 24-bit/96kHz audio transfers of the album’s original first-generation multitrack recordings for the task and the result is that the instruments and vocal now have a completely new level of clarity, especially when it comes to the surround sound mixes.
As part of the celebration, we have painted our front wall with the message “Imagine all the people living life in peace” and invite you to visit Abbey Road to write your own personal message for a better world.
Imagine – The Ultimate Collection is a remixed and remastered 140-track six-disc box set fully authorised by Ono Lennon, who oversaw the production and creative direction. Spread across four CDs and two Blu-ray discs, this truly unique expanded edition offers a variety of listening experiences that are at once immersive and intimate, ranging from the brand new ultimate mixes of the iconic album, which reveal whole new levels of sonic depth, definition and clarity to these timeless songs, to the raw studio mixes that allow listeners to hear Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band’s original, unadorned performances, to enveloping 5.1 surround sound mixes. This ultimate deep listening experience, which features scores of previously unheard demos, rare outtakes and isolated track elements, also includes the evolution mixes, a unique track-by-track audio montage that details the journey of each song from demo to master recording via instructions, rehearsals, recordings, multitrack exploration and studio chatter.