In a recent inter­view, the peren­ni­al­ly cheer­ful Paul McCart­ney talked can­did­ly about his depres­sion after the Bea­t­les’ 1970 breakup, a rev­e­la­tion that may have come as a sur­prise to some peo­ple giv­en Sir Paul’s gen­er­al lev­el of, well, cheer. But, “you would be too if it hap­pened to you,” said McCart­ney, admit­ting that he “took to the bevvies… to a wee dram” (and mak­ing even a drink­ing prob­lem sound upbeat). Where McCart­ney admits he strug­gled to find his foot­ing again musi­cal­ly, two of his estranged band­mates released solo-career-defin­ing albums just months after the Bea­t­les’ offi­cial demise—George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and John Lennon’s Imag­ine.

Lennon, of course, had his own post-Bea­t­les issues with sub­stance abuse and depres­sion. But in 1971 he had kicked a hero­in habit, embraced pri­mal ther­a­py, and was in top musi­cal form. Not only did Imag­ine, the album, go dou­ble plat­inum, but fans and crit­ics con­sid­er “Imag­ine,” the song, one of the finest Lennon ever wrote. In the footage above, we see Lennon dur­ing the ear­ly Imag­ine record­ing ses­sions at his home stu­dio at Tit­ten­hurst Park. Lennon plays the new title track for the album’s musi­cians for the first time, records his vocals and piano, and dis­cuss­es the mix and arrange­ment with Phil Spec­tor and Yoko Ono.

The clip comes from the 2000 doc­u­men­tary Gimme Some Truth: The Mak­ing of John Lennon’s Imag­ine Album, which cap­tures the inti­ma­cy of those record­ing ses­sions, as Lennon and his band eat and talk togeth­er before going into the stu­dio. George Har­ri­son appears often to record gui­tar parts for sev­er­al songs; the band jams and hors­es around; Allen Gins­berg and Miles Davis show up and Davis plays bas­ket­ball with Lennon; and Yoko and John dis­cuss design and album pho­tog­ra­phy.

Lat­er that year, Lennon and Yoko appeared on The Dick Cavett Show to pro­mote the song and album and pre­mier the “Imag­ine” film above. As in near­ly all of his solo work, Ono act­ed both as Lennon’s muse and his col­lab­o­ra­tor, inspir­ing Imag­ine’s “How” and “Oh Yoko” and co-writ­ing “Oh My Love.” She is rarely giv­en cred­it, how­ev­er, for inspiring—and co-writing—“Imagine.” The song owes much to Ono’s “good-natured­ly defi­ant lit­tle book,” Grape­fruit, “part irrev­er­ent activ­i­ty book for grown-ups,” writes Maria Popo­va, “part sub­ver­sive phi­los­o­phy for life,” com­plete with whim­si­cal draw­ings very much like the kind Lennon him­self made and pub­lished in his own books of sil­ly verse.

But while crit­ics and Lennon fans over­look Yoko’s role in “Imagine”’s com­po­si­tion, Lennon lat­er admit­ted it “should be cred­it­ed as a Lennon/Ono song. A lot of it—the lyric and the concept—came from Yoko, but in those days I was a bit more self­ish, a bit more macho, and I sort of omit­ted her con­tri­bu­tion, but it was right out of Grape­fruit.” The album cov­er did, how­ev­er, quote “Cloud piece,” one of the many med­i­ta­tive poems Lennon drew from: “Imag­ine the clouds drip­ping. Dig a hole in your gar­den to put them in.”

In the short mak­ing-of clip at the top, Lennon tells the room, after play­ing a raw ren­di­tion of “Imag­ine” solo on piano, “that’s the one I like best.” The song’s utopi­anism strong­ly con­trasts with the right­eous anger and bit­ter­ness Lennon gave vent to in oth­er songs on Imag­ine, includ­ing “How Do You Sleep?,” in which, he told Play­boy in 1980, “I used my resent­ment and with­draw­ing from Paul and The Bea­t­les, and the rela­tion­ship with Paul.” Ear­ly edi­tions of the LP even includ­ed a post­card pho­to of Lennon hold­ing a pig, mock­ing the cov­er of McCartney’s under­rat­ed Ram. McCart­ney expressed his post-Bea­t­les’ anger in a few minor lyri­cal jabs; Lennon respond­ed with unsub­tle vit­ri­ol. But many of Imag­ine’s songs—celebrations of love, protests against war, and the vision­ary title track—point away from the past and toward the future, or what lit­tle of it remained for Lennon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

John Lennon’s “Imag­ine” & Paul McCartney’s “Yes­ter­day” Adapt­ed into Smart, Mov­ing Web­comics

Hear John Lennon’s Final Inter­view, Taped on the Last Day of His Life (Decem­ber 8, 1980)

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

On May 1st, 2016, Mau­rice Ravel’s mas­ter­ful orches­tral com­po­si­tion Boléro entered the pub­lic domain, which means we may be hear­ing a lot more of the piece, first writ­ten and per­formed in 1928 as a bal­let com­mis­sioned by Russ­ian dancer Ida Ruben­stein. Then again, it’s not like Boléro hasn’t ful­ly per­me­at­ed the public’s domain for decades, regard­less of its copy­right sta­tus.

Audi­ences swooned as British ice dancers Torvill and Dean won the gold at the 1984 Win­ter Olympics in Sara­je­vo with a per­fect score-per­for­mance to Boléro; both Jeff Beck and Frank Zap­pa have cov­ered it; Boléro famous­ly scored a sex scene in 1979’s sleazy com­e­dy 10; it popped up in 2014’s Spi­der-Man 2; and it even pro­vid­ed the title of a film, 1934’s Bolero, which cul­mi­nat­ed in the leads danc­ing to Ravel’s com­po­si­tion….

If you hap­pened to have missed all of these cul­tur­al moments, you’ve still heard Boléro, with its unmis­tak­able flute and pic­co­lo melody and per­sis­tent­ly rap­ping snare drum. (Maybe you, and your tot, saw sev­en chick­ens dance to Boléro on Sesame Street.)

Boléro is not only Ravel’s most famous com­po­si­tion, but per­haps one of the most well-known pieces of clas­si­cal music ever writ­ten. “Famous to his­to­ri­ans and record-books for osten­si­bly con­tain­ing the longest-sus­tained sin­gle crescen­do any­where in orches­tral reper­to­ry,” writes All­mu­sic, and “famous to musi­cians and music lovers for being both the most repet­i­tive 15 min­utes of music they are like­ly to play/hear and also one of the most absolute­ly well-com­posed.” So repet­i­tive is Boléro that it has been cit­ed as evi­dence that Mau­rice Rav­el suf­fered from Alzheimer’s when he wrote it.

I find this expla­na­tion of Boléro uncon­vinc­ing, pri­mar­i­ly because of its afore­men­tioned “well-com­posed” qual­i­ty. This is no musi­cal per­se­ver­a­tion, the symp­tom of a decay­ing mind, but an inten­tion­al exercise—as is so much mod­ern music since Ravel—in find­ing beau­ty and vari­a­tion in same­ness. We hear it in the min­i­mal­ism of com­posers like Steve Reich, or the dron­ing beats of Kraftwerk and Can. In fact, clas­si­cal review mag­a­zine Gramo­phone invokes Krautrock-style rep­e­ti­tion in its descrip­tion of Boléro’s dri­ve “toward motorik self-obliv­ion.” The piece “is about devel­op­ing a sin­gle moment in time, obses­sive­ly rethought/re-shad­ed/re­drawn/re­vis­it­ed, revealed through shift­ing per­spec­tives on itself.”

Gramo­phone’s thor­ough doc­u­men­ta­tion of Boléro’s record­ing his­to­ry details the ways in which a suc­ces­sion of con­duc­tors and orches­tras have approached the piece’s com­plex inter­play of same­ness and dif­fer­ence, begin­ning with one of the very first record­ings, con­duct­ed by Rav­el him­self, in 1930. Lead­ing the Orchestre des Con­certs Lam­oureux in a ses­sion for Poly­dor, Rav­el was in poor health, and per­haps indeed suf­fer­ing from some form of demen­tia. (Two years lat­er, an auto acci­dent wors­ened his con­di­tion; Rav­el died in 1937 after an unsuc­cess­ful brain surgery.) His “con­duct­ing tech­nique” in the 1930 record­ing “falls far short” in com­par­i­son to oth­er record­ed ver­sions, writes Gramo­phone in their tepid review.

Nonethe­less, this ver­sion rep­re­sents a “his­tor­i­cal curio” and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear the com­pos­er pre­side over his own inter­pre­ta­tion of this enthralling piece of music. You can hear Ravel’s record­ing above or on the album Rav­el: Ses Amis et Ses Inter­pretes, avail­able on Spo­ti­fy (get Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware here).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Rav­el Play Rav­el in 1922

Hear Debussy Play Debussy: A Vin­tage Record­ing from 1913

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

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