JOHN LENNON   YOKO ONO   PAUL McCARTNEY   GEORGE HARRISON  

RINGO STARR   DAVID BOWIE   PHIL SPECTOR   JULIAN LENNON   

ERIC CLAPTON   and   SEAN LENNON

star in

IMAGINE

Discover John......the angry youth, the musician, the radical, the husband, the father, the lover, the idealist......through his own words and personal collection of film and music.

VHS - PAL - Ex-Rental - Professionally Cleaned - M-rated - Colour - 1988-release - 103-minutes - Original VHS release in Australia - Large box

** NOTE: 2-sleeves available - back-to-back - you decide the one for you! - see photos! **

This "biography" evolves around the nearly 240 hours of film and videotape fortuitously taken by Lennon of his life. 

The archive footage is transformed into a fascinating life story of one of the most complex and fascinating men of the modern music era.

 This effort includes a 36 song soundtrack. 

Includes some very personal and insightful footage, never before made available to the public.

In 1987, seven years after John Lennon's tragic murder, a book came out. I've forgotten the title and the author, but it portrayed Lennon VERY negatively. It showed him as a cruel, egotistical monster who abused drugs and alcohol up to his death. The book was written by somebody who had never talked to anybody who knew Lennon. Yoko Ono was shocked and pushed to have this documentary made to set the record straight.

It's full of home movies, news footage, videos all narrated by John Lennon himself (he recorded over 200 hours talking about his life and work). It's not a whitewash of him - it does point out he was a mean drunk and he is shown swearing and telling off Phil Spector in a recording studio when a song was not working out. 

It also chronicles his remark about the Beatles being "bigger than Jesus Christ" and totally ignores how horribly he treated his first wife Cynthia. But, aside from that footage, there is also interviews with Johns wives, his children and, basically, everyone who knew him (curiously, none of the Beatles were interviewed). 

He comes across as a very talented, peace-loving man - he has his dark moments but everybody does. His confrontations with Al Capp and Gloria Emerson are just fascinating.

I remember seeing this in a theatre in 1988 and most of the audience walked out crying. 15 years later the ending still packs a punch. It shows people crying at the peace rallies held after Lennon's death and ends with the "Imagine" video him and Yoko did. 

Also "In My Life" plays over the closing credits. A fascinating, very moving documentary of a great man. Recommended.