John Lennon
Lennon at His Rawest – Why the One to One concerts remain Lennon’s greatest post-Beatles statement.
On August 30, 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono strode into Madison Square Garden and turned rock and roll into a call to action. The One to One Benefit Concert — played twice in one day to a combined audience of 40,000 — wasn’t just Lennon’s only full-length solo shows after The Beatles, it was also a moment when activism and music collided, raising more than $11.5 million in today’s dollars for children with disabilities, including those at the infamous Willowbrook State School.
The shows were electric: songs from Lennon and Ono’s solo albums, tracks from their just-released, politically charged Sometime in New York City, a fiery Beatles reunion with “Come Together,” and anthems of peace like “Imagine” and “Give Peace a Chance” — the latter featuring a special appearance from Stevie Wonder.
Fifty-three years later to the day, Lennon’s estate has released a previously unseen performance of “Instant Karma! (We All Shine On),” captured during the matinee show. The video premiered at 2 p.m. ET — the exact time Lennon hit the stage in 1972 — offering fans a rare, newly restored glimpse of Lennon at his best.
Remixed from the original analog tapes by Paul Hicks and Sam Gannon, with oversight from Sean Ono Lennon, the track bristles with urgency. The restoration also marks the latest preview of Power to the People (The Ultimate Collection), a sprawling 12-disc box set arriving October 10 — one day after Lennon would have turned 85.
The collection is nothing short of a time capsule: nine CDs and three Blu-ray audio discs housed in a 10-inch slipcase with silver foil titling and a lenticular cover morphing John and Yoko’s faces into one. Inside is a 204-page hardback book compiled by Simon Hilton, brimming with oral histories, rare photos, lyrics, and memorabilia. Also included are replica concert tickets, backstage passes, posters, and stickers — tactile echoes of a turbulent era. At its heart are the One to One concerts, presented together in full for the first time. Both afternoon and evening shows are newly mixed in stereo, 5.1 Surround, and Dolby Atmos, with a “Hybrid” edition combining the best moments from each set. It’s a fitting upgrade from the long out-of-print 1986 Live in New York City LP.
“That Madison Square Garden gig was the best music I enjoyed playing since The Cavern or even Hamburg,” Lennon told NME in 1972. “It was just the same kind of feeling when The Beatles used to really get into it. That was when we played music.”
For Sean Ono Lennon, curating and remixing the archive was more than technical work — “People may not realize how special it is for me to hear my dad talking or to see him,” Sean said. “To come across things that I’ve never seen or heard is really deep for me, because it’s almost like getting more time with my dad.”
Beyond the concerts, Power to the People captures Lennon and Ono’s first New York years: a time of radical politics, government surveillance, and personal heartbreak. After moving to Greenwich Village in 1971, the couple became fixtures in activist circles, rallying against the Vietnam War, racism, and prison injustice — to the point where Nixon’s White House and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI began extensive surveillance and deportation efforts against Lennon. Their 1972 album Sometime in New York City chronicled the period with unflinching bluntness, and in Power to the People, those songs have been remixed and reordered into a new collection called New York City, stripped of their heavy original production.
The box also features Evolution Documentaries — audio montages charting each track from demo to master — plus Studio Jam sessions, Live Jam recordings with everyone from Frank Zappa to David Peel, and intimate Home Jam tapes.
In her preface to the set, Yoko Ono Lennon writes: “The One to One concert was our effort in Grassroots Politics. It embodied what John and I strongly believed in – Rock for Peace and Enlightenment. And this one in Madison Square Garden turned out to be the last concert John and I did together.”
That mix of defiance, vulnerability, and sheer joy in music is what makes the newly surfaced “Instant Karma!” so powerful, it’s Lennon at full force, driving home the song’s mantra: We All Shine On.
Watch “Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)” here.
About the Author
