How Deep Into "Mind Games" Do You Want to Get?

this box set goes to the album's limbic system

The first question you have to ask yourself before buying any of the three iterations of this album is how much do you like it? The second question to ask is how much do you wish to know about it? How deep a dive do you wish to take?

UMe recently held a press event at the Dolby screening room in New York City in which the Atmos mix was played and many of the musicians were on hand for a Q&A. Jim Keltner was on the road with Bob Dylan so he appeared in a live video. This guy looks, sounds, and plays great for an 82 year old!

I still don't think a movie theater is the proper venue for music reproduction or to debut a record album, but of all the Atmos mixes I've heard there, I thought this was the least offensive. I'm just not a fan of "immersive mixes" because many of them are so poor and spread things too far apart creating multiple mono and some of them actually use the wrong elements grabbed from the wrong sources. This one was one of the most cohesive and kept the field reasonably forward of the sides of the listener's head.

Afterwards, I encountered Sean Ono Lennon (who I didn't ask for a selfie making me the center of attention) and he admitted he wasn't a big Atmos fan either. Maybe that's why this mix wasn't super spread and disjointed. Sean was approachable, thoughtful and whatever you may think of the songs themselves, he did an outstanding producing and creative direction job, more about that later.

Sean with unidentified young lady who may have asked for a selfie

This Ultimate Collection is midway between the vinyl excerpt set (double LPs one containing the new mix, one containing the out-takes, plus marketing poster, postcard-sized reproductions of 1973 advert artworks and an individually numbered Citizen of Nutopia ID Card) and the super-deluxe limited to 1100 pieces $1350 Collector’s Edition Super Deluxe Box Set.

The Ultimate Collection is a smartly presented GZ Media produced compact box set featuring a hard bound 136 page book and two fold open packets, one containing two Blu-ray discs, the other holding a half-dozen CDs all in service of an album that in my opinion is generally more historically than musically interesting.

There are three mixes: "The Ultimate Mixes", "The Elemental Mixes" and the "Elements Mixes", presented on one Blu-ray as 24-192 stereo, 5.1 surround, Dolby Digital and Dolby Atmos. The other Blu-ray offers the same surround and stereo choices of "The Evolution Documentary", "The "Raw Studio Mixes" and "The Out-Takes". The same series of stereo mixes are contained on the six CDs at 16 bit/44.1K resolution.

Originally released in Fall of 1973, Mind Games was Lennon's first album not interfered with, I mean not produced by Phil Spector. It came at a time when he was facing deportation for his anti-war activities and his phone was probably being tapped. He'd been in court numerous times attempting to avoid deportation and remain in America, he was about to separate from Yoko and he'd not written or released anything in more than a year. The musical and political climate was changing and Lennon knew he had to back away from the heavily political, and move to songs that were more personal and confessional. He wrote the whole thing in short order and recorded the album in an equally compressed time period.

The title track is the album's highlight and every play then and to this day summons up the deepest melancholy knowing that John Lennon is gone and who knows what he'd have offered the world had he lived. It's indelibly Lennon and so vital but is anything else on the record? Your call, maybe the "Sexy Sadie"-like reprise "Out the Blue"—also indelibly Lennonesque—but only a small number of songs strongly registered with me then or now.

Looking at Imagine's vital song list that includes the title tune, "Crippled Inside", "Jealous Guy" (you could stop right there and declare the contest over) "Give Me Some Truth", the nasty and personal "How Do You Sleep" and the tender "Oh Yoko" and it's clear which album deserves dissection and analysis and which probably doesn't. Nonetheless Mind Games sold sufficiently well to earn a Gold Record $1,000,000 in sales. He was, after all John Lennon.

What came after this until his death was a mixed bag with Walls and Bridges" reaching the top of the charts fueled by the celebratory "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" and the haunting, nostalgia-laden "#9 Dream". Still, who knows how Lennon might have re-imagined his art following his reconciliation with Yoko that produced the very personal, somewhat maudlin, not particularly well-received Double Fantasy?

The Dolby Screening room affair reunited some of the albums' key players including the aforementioned Jim Keltner, guitarist David Spinozza, bassist Gordon Edwards and drummer Rick Marotta (of course MIA was the late pedal steel great Sneaky Pete Kleinow and Michael Brecker). They were ushered to the front of the theater but the emcee never bothered to individually introduce them in what turned into a disorganized but entertaining and warm-hearted reunion that could have been so much more. So, maybe keyboardist Ken Ascher was there too?

For me it was an opportunity to issue Rick Marotta an apology thirty years in the making. In the mid 1990s when The Tracking Angle was a print magazine a postcard arrived with a request for a copy of the magazine. It came at a time when we were working so hard putting out a great magazine, yet struggling financially because the record business wasn't interested in supporting a magazine dedicated to physical media, especially vinyl, which had been declared dead (though we covered CDs too). The request for a free copy so incensed me that I took the postcard wrote "who the f*%k are you to just ask for a free magazine????" , stuck it in a Tracking Angle large envelope big enough to hold an issue, put some stamps on it and as I dropped it in the mail slot realized the requester was drummer Rick Marotta, whose name I could place on so many albums sitting on my shelves! But it was too late and I couldn't find the address, though I remember it was on Staten Island.

I brought two issues of The Tracking Angle with me, went up to Marotta, apologized, then explained why and handed him the magazines. He vaguely remembered and we both laughed. Mission accomplished!

There was a previous stereo mix more than a decade ago that's the one you have if you have the one Mobile Fidelity released on vinyl. It's different from the original, which I have in the Lennon U.K. box set released in 1981. Neither of those are particularly distinguished sounding despite being recorded at The Hit Factory with Roy Cicala helming the record. This remix is "punchier" better organized, and has far better and more appropriate bass. Lennon's voice is mixed well forward of where it was on the original and it just proves he was a much better vocalist than he gave himself credit for being. It dispenses with the perhaps unintended distance and mystery of the original mix and provides far greater detail on a flatter stage. Still not a great sounding recording and never will be and maybe the bass has been punched up a bit too much. Maybe it's a matter of nostalgia but the title tune remix fails to fill me with the wistful nostalgia summoned up by the original where I experience Lennon in the haze reaching out to connect.

The "Elements Mix" minimizes each track to three instruments and lets you hear the cores of each song and some of the lovely playing buried in the final busy instrumentation and mixes.

The more useful "Elemental Mixes" remove drums and highlight acoustic instruments and Lennon's vocals. There's a lot of material to go through and I admit I didn't listen to more than necessary to get the feel of it. It demonstrates the core quality of the songwriting in terms of structure and lyrical intent.

The book is masterfully done and features great photos of people, tape boxes, time-related memorabila, fascinating new interviews/reminiscences with some of the surviving players and tech people, all of which would be more vital if the music was more monumental—at least that's my reaction. Yours may differ.

Some readers may ask why a middling album deserves such obsessive treatment. One reason of course is that it's a John Lennon album and the estate and family wishes to maximally memorialize John Lennon and who could argue with that? Another reason might be that the major labels don't seem to have the gravity to break new artists and so rely on maximizing catalog value. If you're going to do that at least give consumers something truly exceptional and as a fully realized package this is physically and sonically.

The reminiscence by engineer Dan Barbiero was illuminating and for any John Lennon fan worth reading. Barbiero had been new to engineering—a few months in— when he hit it off with Stevie Wonder who asked him to record Innervision. Apparently Lennon liked the vocal sound there and requested Barbiero's services for Mind Games. Lennon preferred recording in closed sessions with few if any people around. Imagine spending quality time with John Lennon creating! Barbiero writes "I record a lot of vocals in the middle of the night with just the two of us. That and a lot of mixing together".

What an experience! Nonetheless, after a page full of rich recollections, Barbiero concludes, "I left the business and went into financial services." LOL! The man got out just in time. But he added, "...it was one of the great high-points of my life to be able to hang out with John and get to know him and talk with him....I have Bob Gruen's picture of John on my wall, watching over me all the time." The rest of us don't have the picture but those of us who are fans have that same feeling, especially every December 8th when we re-live 1980. Where were you? I was having dinner in California with Chuck and Nancy (not Schumer and Pelosi) and with Shriver and Schwarzenegger (yes, Maria and Arnold). But that's a story for another time!