| Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by John Lennon and Yoko Ono | ||||
| Released | 29 November 1968 | |||
| Recorded | 19 May 1968 (most likely date) | |||
| Genre | Avant-garde | |||
| Length | 29:27 | |||
| Label | Apple Records / Rykodisc | |||
| Producer | John Lennon and Yoko Ono | |||
| John Lennon and Yoko Ono chronology | ||||
|
||||
Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins is an album released by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1968. The result of an all-night session of musical experimentation in Lennon's home studio at Kenwood,[1] John and Yoko's debut album is known not only for its avant garde content, but also for its cover. The album's title came from the couple's feeling that they were "two innocents, lost in a world gone mad", and because after making the recording, the two consummated their relationship.[2]
The recording consists largely of tape loops, playing while Lennon tries out different instruments (piano, organ, drums) and sound effects (including reverb, delay and distortion), changes tapes and plays other recordings, and converses with Ono, who vocalises ad-lib in response to the sounds. Lennon's longtime friend Peter Shotton remembered later in his memoir (The Beatles, Lennon and Me) that many of the loops were made by Lennon and himself, in the days before the recording. Lennon recorded directly to two-track stereophonic, but much of the source material was monophonic.[3]
Two Virgins was the third album released under the Apple Records label, after George Harrison's Wonderwall Music and The Beatles. It was distributed by Track Records in the United Kingdom and Tetragrammaton Records in the United States, after EMI in the UK and Capitol Records in the US refused to handle it, because of the cover photo. (Nonetheless, EMI mastered and pressed the record in Britain, charging their standard fee.) The couple soon after released a related recording called Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions.
Fellow Beatle Paul McCartney was asked to provide a note on the album cover, which read: "When two great Saints meet, it is a humbling experience. The long battles to prove he was a Saint."[4]
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [5] |
Contents |
Two Virgins failed to chart in the UK (and only 5000 British copies were ever pressed), but managed to reach #124 in the US.
The album was reissued in the US and Japan during the 1970s and 1980s. While the American reissues were of inferior quality, the Japanese pressings were made on virgin vinyl and enclosed in rice paper inner sleeves. One US edition from 1984, on the Apple label and claiming to be distributed by Tetragrammaton (the original US distributor) was not mastered from the original tape, but merely transferred from another LP copy with audible surface noise. A CD edition from the same vinyl-transfer source was issued in 1991 by Creative Sounds Ltd. in the US, claiming an association with Tetragrammaton on the cover.
The album was officially reissued from a proper remaster on Rykodisc in 1997 as part of a series of Yoko Ono reissues, with an additional bonus track — "Remember Love", Ono's B-side to "Give Peace a Chance". This edition is slightly edited; it is missing about a minute of audio from the end of each side. The 1997 CD edition was also issued in Japan by Video Arts.
Actress Sissy Spacek, using the pseudonym Rainbo, recorded the song "John, You Went Too Far This Time" about the album cover. The song is occasionally played on Dr. Demento's radio show.
A recording of "Together", written by George Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson, is heard in the background. "Together" was originally a no. 1 pop hit by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra in 1928, featuring Bix Beiderbecke on coronet.
The couple used a time-delay camera to take nude photographs of themselves for the album's cover. The front cover showed them frontally nude including Lennon's penis and Ono's breasts and pudendal cleft, and both Lennon's and Ono's unkempt pubic hair, while the rear cover showed them nude from behind including their buttocks. (The photos were taken not at Kenwood, but at Ringo Starr's basement apartment at Montagu Square, where Lennon and Ono stayed later that year.) The cover provoked an outrage, prompting distributors to sell the album in a plain brown wrapper.[6] Copies of the album were impounded as obscene in several jurisdictions (including 30,000 copies in New Jersey). Lennon commented that the uproar seemed to have less to do with the explicit nudity, and more to do with the fact that the pair were rather unattractive (and the photo unflattering; Lennon described it later as a picture of "two slightly overweight ex-junkies").[7]
All selections by Yoko Ono and John Lennon unless otherwise noted.
Rykodisc CD bonus track: "Remember Love" (Ono)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||