Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon

John Lennon - Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon

Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon
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CD Details

Artist: John Lennon
Brand: LENNON,JOHN
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2005-10-04
Music Label: Capitol
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
  1. (Just Like) Starting Over
  2. Imagine
  3. Watching The Wheels
  4. Jealous Guy
  5. Instant Karma!
  6. Stand By Me
  7. Working Class Hero
  8. Power To The People
  9. Oh My Love
  10. Oh Yoko
  11. Nobody Loves You When You're Down And Out
  12. Nobody Told Me
  13. Bless You
  14. Come Together (Live)
  15. New York City
  16. I'm Stepping Out
  17. You Are Here
  18. Borrowed Time
  19. Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
Music CD 2
  1. Woman
  2. Mind Games
  3. Out Of The Blue
  4. Whatever Gets You Thru The Night
  5. Love
  6. Mother
  7. Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)
  8. Woman Is The Nigger Of The World
  9. God
  10. Scared
  11. #9 Dream
  12. I'm Losing You (Anthology Version)
  13. Isolation
  14. Cold Turkey
  15. Intuition
  16. Gimme Some Truth
  17. Give Peace A Chance
  18. Real Love
  19. Grow Old With Me

Music reviews of Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon

Music Review: The Lennon Anthology That Says It All
Rating: 5 Stars

John Lennon was the first musician in modern times to have a keen understanding of his own iconic status and he used it to build an international political community for world peace. Even those who have political differences will Lennon, agree that his intellect, political savvy had tremendous impact on an entire generation of young people. Lennon told us that the movement we need for international peace was on our shoulders and came up with the audacious idea that war is over, if we want it.

Even in hindsight, I don't even think most of us who lived through Beatles era completely appreciate the impact that John Lennon had on their own lives. Richard Nixon understood Lennon's impact on the peace movement. Nixon lived in fear of Lennon and fought a long battle in court to have him deported as an undesirable alien.

After the breakup of the Beatles, Paul, and Ringo retreated into the cocoon of domestic bliss and the bland irrelevance of by-the-numbers rock stardom. George became a devotee of Krishna Consciousness and had a fleeting moment of social consciousness when he put together two benefit concerts for the refugees of war torn Bangladesh in 1971.

John was the keeper of the flame and the unapologetic activist, and despite all of his personal flaws John was indeed the "brilliant Beatle."

The two CD, 38 song anthology, "Working Class Hero" demonstrates how profoundly relevant Lennon's music remains to our own lives in 2006, three decades after his death.

John was the visionary and the dreamer, even as he told us that "the dream was over." John's music embraced existential ambiguity and contradiction. Lennon's exploration of the human condition was uncharted territory for a pop musician to explore the "boggie down" climate of the American music business in the early Seventies. Not even Dylan was writting songs that were as emotionally resonant and flat-out honest as John's "Mother", "Imagine", or "God."

No other musician has significantly changed the lives of those who heard his message, as John Lennon has. John's message was simple: no matter how long you live, or how dire the world appears to be, never give up on your dreams. To his critics who called him naieve John said, "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." John was right. Without our dreams we might as well be dead.

"Working Class Hero" is sole anthology of Lennon's work that defines Lennon the artist, the man, the philosopher and charismatic leader of a movement for world peace. Lennon's magnificent story is embedded in the content of the 38 songs in "Working Class Hero."

Pay no attention to the naysayers who have various hairs-splitting complaints about "Working Class Hero." One reviewer complains the album has been "remixed" but it's a specious claim because the pristine digital sound quality is actually far better than the early 1970s state of the art studio mixes. The biggest improvements are on the Phil Specter produced tracks in which Mr. Specter, for the first time in his career, seemed oddly disengaged from the artist he was producing.

As far selection of the 38 songs that comprise this anthology, they couldn't be better. If there was an important song from Lennon's legacy left out of this collection, nobody has pointed it out to me. These are the exact songs I would select if I were burning my own CD of John Lennon's songs. All previous Lennon collections have significant omissions of some of John's best songs. This anthology does justice to the complete trajectory of John Lennon's solo career from "Live Peace in Toronto 1969" to "Live in New York City" his posthumous live release in 1986. There isn't a single song that is filler here.

The presentation of the songs isn't in any rigid chronological order but there is a pattern of presenting the songs in reverse chronology. It benins with "Starting Over" in a journey backwards in time end up with John's earliest Plastic Ono Band recordings, like "Cold Turkey" and "Give Peace a Chance". The reason why some songs are presented out of order is, perhaps, an effort to equitably distribute Lennon's best music over the run length of both CDs.

If you are a causal fan of John Lennon's the only other way you'll get a more complete profile of John's career is to purchase the 4 CD box set "Anthology" (1998) which is grossly overpriced at $67.49. "Anthology" is more complete but not better than "Working Class Hero", because "Anthology degrades the quality of selections by including outtakes, alternative takes, studio chatter, home recording sessions and rarities that weren't good enough to be included in any of John's catalog of releases.

By contrast, "Working Class Hero" is Lennon's top-shelf material and you don't have to suffer through the 2 hours of filler cuts to harvest the bounty of these essential 38 songs that defined Lennon as an artist. The price of "Working Class Hero" is $22.99, which is a steal by comparison
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Description of Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon

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More from John Lennon

Imagine
Lennon Legend
The U.S. vs. John Lennon

Mind Games
Working Class Hero
John Lennon Anthology

On October 9, 2005, John Lennon would have turned 65, if only...

Instead, the former Beatles leader and endlessly complex rock icon remains forever frozen in time, basking in the warm reception of his 1980 return to recording after a long, self-imposed exile from the music business. But this two-disc, 38-track collection does more than merely commemorate the landmark birthday Lennon tragically never celebrated; it's arguably the best compact overview of his often conflicted post-Fabs career. Considering he spent fully half the decade chronicled here in semi-retirement, it's a remarkably robust and diverse body of work, whether focused on sloganeering agit-prop ("Power to the People," "Woman is the Nigger of the World," "Give Peace a Chance," "Working Class Hero"), semi-autobiographical musings that ranged from the harrowing ("Cold Turkey," "Mother") to the unabashedly sentimental ("Oh Yoko!," "Watching the Wheels," "Starting Over"). "Imagine" and "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" may showcase one of the era's most wide-eyed idealists, but the range of emotions cataloged in much of his other work argue that John Lennon was a bundle of emotional and philosophical complexities. As Yoko One once noted, "People have wanted to box him in..But he was a very human, three-dimensional person... Sometimes he was angry, sometimes he was sad, sometimes he was very vulnerable and sweet. All of that was going on in every period of his life." This set never sidesteps those complications; indeed, the songs collected here thrive on them. --Jerry McCulley

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