John Lennon was an invet­er­ate archivist of sound and image, doc­u­ment­ing his life in what­ev­er medi­um he had avail­able to him and leav­ing behind acres of tape for friends and fans to dis­cov­er. Lennon’s tapes com­prise hun­dreds of hours of song sketch­es, full demos, con­ver­sa­tions, jokes, and, as Yoko Ono puts it in her intro to The Lost Lennon Tapes, some “pret­ty per­son­al stuff.” The Lost Lennon Tapes was a radio series that aired between 1988 and 1992, pre­sent­ing over two hun­dred hours of archival Lennon audio in 219 episodes. Host­ed by Lennon’s friend Elliot Mintz, the series gave lis­ten­ers an inti­mate look into John’s cre­ative process through demos like that above, a 1966 series of sketch­es that would become Revolver’s “She Said, She Said.”

In this record­ing, Lennon, alone with a jan­g­ly gui­tar, works out the now-famil­iar chord pro­gres­sions and vocal melodies of the song in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent iterations—and with some quirky lyri­cal vari­ants (“She’s mak­ing me feel like my trousers are torn”). We get to hear the song evolve in sev­er­al stages, from its boun­cy two-chord begin­nings to its final, East­ern-inspired form. The demo also pro­vides evi­dence of the song’s con­cep­tu­al ori­gins; in the first cou­ple ver­sions, you can hear Lennon sing “he said” instead of “she.” The “he” refers to Peter Fon­da, who inspired the song by freak­ing Lennon out dur­ing an acid trip, utter­ing what became the song’s first line, “I know what it’s like to be dead.”

Just above you can hear sev­er­al dif­fer­ent 1966 home demo takes of “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” with John singing over a lone elec­tric gui­tar. Lennon stops and starts sev­er­al times, then, at 1:55, finds his groove and plays the whole song through. Next, we hear a run-through with added Mel­lotron, that odd ear­ly pro­to-syn­the­siz­er that lent the final George Mar­tin-pro­duced ver­sion so much of its dis­tinc­tive sound. Final­ly, at 6:15, hear one of the very first demo record­ings of the song—a beau­ti­ful solo acoustic ver­sion record­ed in Alme­ria, Spain. In the promi­nent gui­tar, we hear the strange, ser­pen­tine chord pat­tern that gives the song such a haunt­ing feel. Lennon began com­pos­ing the song in Spain while film­ing his scenes for Richard Lester’s How I Won the War.

Paul McCart­ney once called Lennon’s “Don’t Let Me Down” a “gen­uine plea” to Yoko, inter­pret­ing the song as John say­ing “I’m real­ly just let­ting my vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty be seen, so you must not let me down.” The Bea­t­les record­ed sev­er­al ver­sions of the song for the Let it Be ses­sions and released it as a B side to the “Get Back” sin­gle in 1969, though Phil Spec­tor even­tu­al­ly dropped the song from Let it Be. McCart­ney restored it to his re-release of the album, Let it Be… Naked, in which he stripped the songs of Spector’s stu­dio effects. Above, hear “Don’t Let Me Down” at its most stripped-down in a 1968 home demo. Just Lennon with his acoustic gui­tar, qui­et­ly strum­ming out his bluesy love tune, a stark con­trast to the scream­ing rock­er the song would become.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

John Lennon’s Raw, Soul-Bar­ing Vocals From the Bea­t­les’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Mak­ing the rounds on the inter­net is this per­for­mance by the Ger­man string quar­tet Salut Salon. Fea­tur­ing Ange­li­ka Bach­mann (vio­lin), Iris Siegfried (vio­lin and vocals), Anne-Moni­ka von Twar­dows­ki (piano) and Son­ja Lena Schmid (cel­lo), the quar­tet knows “bet­ter than any oth­er cham­ber music ensem­ble how to seduce their audi­ence with pas­sion­ate vir­tu­os­i­ty, instru­men­tal acro­bat­ics, charm and a great sense of fun.” Above you can get your week start­ed by watch­ing them per­form a mash-up of Vival­di, Mozart, and Kurt Weill. And to keep your day going, you can always watch 2Cellos bang­ing out a ver­sion of Guns N’ Ros­es “Wel­come to the Jun­gle” and this 14-year-old girl play­ing a blis­ter­ing heavy met­al per­for­mance of Vival­di. Enjoy.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Music from 150+ Clas­si­cal Com­posers, Cour­tesy of Musopen.org

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

“The best rea­son to hate Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions,” writes pianist Jere­my Denk, “is that every­body loves them.” As part of Denk’s icon­o­clas­tic chal­lenge to this uni­ver­sal love, he cites anoth­er rea­son: “every­one asks you all the time which of the two Glenn Gould record­ings you pre­fer.” With­out a doubt the most cel­e­brat­ed pianist of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, and per­haps the great­est inter­preter of Bach’s key­board com­po­si­tions, the eccen­tric genius Gould famous­ly opened and closed his career with the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, Bach’s “annoy­ing­ly unim­peach­able” (in Denk’s words) Baroque piece, writ­ten orig­i­nal­ly for the harp­si­chord. Gould made his first record­ing of the piece in 1955, and it imme­di­ate­ly launched him to star­dom, becom­ing “what may well be the best known of all piano record­ings,” Col­in Flem­ing tells us, with its “mas­ter­ful show­ing of com­mand, bal­ance, [and] vig­or.”

Twen­ty-six years lat­er, Gould made his sec­ond record­ing, in 1981, a year before his untime­ly death at the age of 50. Gould had already retired from pub­lic per­for­mance 18 years ear­li­er, due in part to his stage fright, but also to a devo­tion to stu­dio record­ing tech­niques that allowed him total con­trol over his musi­cal out­put. The filmed record­ing ses­sion of Gould’s sec­ond Vari­a­tions, above, opens with a shot not of the pianist and his instru­ment, but of the bank of ana­logue dials and switch­es inside the studio’s con­trol booth. As the cam­era pans over and push­es in to Gould him­self at the piano, we hear the famil­iar melody of the Gold­berg aria, slowed to a snail’s pace. Gould sits in his famil­iar hunched-over pos­ture, look­ing aged beyond his years, his body sway­ing over the keys in an expres­sive gen­u­flec­tion to the piece that made him more famous—and more controversial—than per­haps any oth­er clas­si­cal musi­cian.

The shift in Gould’s style between the two Gold­berg record­ings is remark­able. Revis­it­ing Gould’s lega­cy thir­ty years after his death, pianist Steven Osbourne writes in The Guardian of the 1981 per­for­mance above:

The con­tra­pun­tal detail he finds in every bar is amaz­ing; no one has equalled the way he plays the aria. But even more extra­or­di­nary is the line he cre­ates that con­nects the whole piece. I’m not sure I have heard any­thing where every sin­gle note is placed so care­ful­ly, is so care­ful­ly thought about. For some peo­ple, it’s too con­trolled, but I don’t find that.

“And yet,” says Osbourne, “I pre­fer his 1955 record­ing of the piece. I can’t think of a sin­gle artist who made such a pro­found change in their approach to a piece through­out their whole career.” Cer­tain­ly Gould’s first Gold­berg recording—fueled, as the lin­er notes inform us, by five bot­tles of pills, “all dif­fer­ent col­ors and prescriptions”—stands as per­haps the most idio­syn­crat­ic, and mem­o­rable, ren­der­ing of Bach’s com­po­si­tion. But while the first per­for­mance has “speed and light­ness going for it,” writes Erik Tarloff in Slate, the sec­ond has “an autum­nal grace and the mar­velous clar­i­ty Gould seems to priv­i­lege above all oth­er qual­i­ties.” Luck­i­ly for us, Gould, who “nev­er record­ed the same piece twice,” but for this “sig­nif­i­cant excep­tion,” left us these two career book­ends to debate, and enjoy, end­less­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

Glenn Gould Offers a Strik­ing­ly Uncon­ven­tion­al Inter­pre­ta­tion of 1806 Beethoven Com­po­si­tion

The Art of Fugue: Gould Plays Bach

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.