The new documentary “One to One: John & Yoko” being released in theaters this weekend is much more than a concert film — but its Imax big-screen release is a sure indicator that many fans expect the live performance core of the movie to deliver on that level, whatever else has been built around that footage. At its center is a healthy amount of the “One to One” benefit concerts that John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Elephant’s Memory performed at Madison Square Garden in August 1972, which turned out to be the only full live show Lennon ever did between the breakup of the Beatles two and a half years earlier and his death eight years later. The concert stuff needs to blast out of those speakers in the best fidelity possible, and charged with making that happen was Sean Ono Lennon, who worked on fresh mixes of this material, just as he has worked on recent endeavors like the Grammy-winning “Mind Games” boxed set.
Sean sat down with Variety to talk about his work on the new film, which will extend to a “One to One” boxed set being released in the fall of 2025. (If you want a physical-media teaser for the set, a four-song EP of songs from the ’72 performance is being released on vinyl Saturday for Record Store Day, in a very limited quantity.) He also spoke about what he thinks director Kevin MacDonald‘s film gets right about his mother and father, and how some freshly uncovered audiotapes of phone calls the couple recorded let him reconnect afresh to his dad, who died when Sean was 5. Watching the movie, Sean is having his own one-on-one with the most important people in his life.
The concert performance in “One to One” was never as well known as the one captured earlier on the “Live Peace in Toronto” album — it’s been underexposed or undervalued over the years. How have you thought about it, in terms of whether the the time was right for reviving it, or whether it was something that even needed a revisit?
Well, it’s funny because I think I figure out what most people think after I start working on projects. For example, with “Mind Games,” I didn’t realize until midway through the boxed set, and we were doing interviews for the liner notes and for the accompanying book, that “Mind Games: had been considered unsuccessful. I didn’t know about that narrative, really. And it’s the same thing for the “One to One” concert, because when I was young… I’m not sure what year it was, but my mom put it out — “John Lennon Live in New York City” is what they called it, and that was the “One to One” concert. [That CD and DVD release came out in 1986.] So I grew up listening to it, and it was a concert that had a legendary status in my mind, because it was my dad’s last concert.
I actually remember wanting a Les Paul because he played Les Paul during that show. I remember actually noticing that he made a mistake on one of the notes on the piano, or actually it’s a Wurlitzer, during the song “Mother” and thinking, “Wow, I guess it’s okay to make mistakes on stage” — you know, stuff like that. It was really in my brain and on my consciousness, that show, growing up. So it wasn’t until we’d been working on this that I heard from many people that it was a lesser-known show; I thought everybody knew about it.
But what I will say is … well, first of all, the audio, I think, had never really been addressed, thoroughly. So I think that’s been a huge improvement. And then the film that Kevin MacDonald made about the concert completely transcends the concert itself, I think. Arguably the concert is just sort of a launching point for a much larger narrative. I’s a lot more interesting than just a rock concert, let’s put it that way.
People who come to see it in Imax may be expecting a concert movie, and if people want to see that, they’ll probably be satisfied. But what the film turns out to be as it unfolds is not entirely expected. It’s documentary, but without talking heads to explain what’s going on, just mostly archive footage, with an attempt to really drop you into the early ‘70s, and ‘72 specifically. What was it like for you to watch the film, and what did you think of the approach that McDonald landed on, kind of a “you are there with John and Yoko,” almost?
Honestly, I think Kevin is an amazing director and obviously he’s made many great films, so he knows what he’s doing. And his angle on this story is something that I couldn’t have imagined, I guess. Because I probably would’ve imagined, as you said some people might be imagining, that it would just be a concert film. But really the concert is a window through which you can view the lives of my parents at that time, moving to New York from the U.K., and then through their eyes, you view the greater political and cultural landscape of the early ‘70s. So, like any great film should be, it’s very multi-layered and has macro and micro narratives that are all equally compelling in different ways.
Some of those telephone recordings included in the film are remarkable. You hadn’t heard those either until they were uncovered in the process of producing this, right?
Yeah. Especially because I grew up without my dad around, every recording of his voice and every video of him that people have seen, it’s a limited resource. And so for me, for example, when “Get Back” came out, Peter Jackson’s re-imagining of “Let It Be,” the film footage, just getting to see my dad hanging out in situations that I’d never seen him in before, is really very precious to me personally. So it’s the same thing with these audio calls. Just getting to listen to him talking about things that I never heard him say is is pretty incredible. I mean, that’s just on a personal level.
But then there’s also this broader level where I think it’s really interesting that John and Yoko famously recorded their lives all the time via video — I mean, via 16 millimeter film. You know, they were documenting their lives daily when they were living at Tittenhurst in England [where they lived 1969-71]. And then when they got to New York, they were recording all of their own phone calls, because the FBI had been monitoring them and arguably harassing them, and Nixon was trying to deport my dad from the country. So, on one of the audio calls, you hear my dad saying, “I’m recording all of these calls just so we have our own copy of this, so if anyone ever tries to say anything about what we are talking about, then we’ll have our own version — so we’ll know what the truth is.” It’s pretty wild to think that that was actually necessary to do, which I think it was probably a smart idea to do at the time.
And just also the fact that they were doing that in the early ‘70s, before reality television and before social media and before memes — they were already kind of ahead of their time in that regard. As far as I am concerned, it’s like they were the first reality TV celebrity couple. And also they were the first to kind of use memes to spread their own ideas with, for example, “Give peace a chance” or “War is over if you want it,” or whatever their slogans were; they’re arguably kind of mimetic campaigns for social issues. So it’s fascinating to see how they were able to use the technology to document and record their private lives while also sort of using that level of intimacy to create media that was important to them — meaning that they wanted to show who they were and the truth of who they were, and they wanted people to see them unmanicured and unfiltered. And I feel like no one was really doing that at the time. Now it’s normal: You look on Instagram and you see famous people showing their dental work or whatever. But I feel like they were kind of ahead of their time in that regard in terms of wanting to really show the world the truth of who they were.
ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO
Brian Hamill
In the private phone calls they recorded, they’re still the same funny, driven people that we know publicly. It’s interesting to hear a conversation between your dad and Allen Klein, where it’s it’s almost kind of an archetypal example of an artist and businessman talking. The manager is saying, to paraphrase, “Well, sure, go ahead and do that, but don’t invest too much into it, because it’s not gonna commercially do anything.” Klein is kind of humoring him a little, like, “Sure, do one song at this benefit with your radical friends if you want, but no more than that,” and John is saying, “No, I want to do a lot more than one.”
Yeah. Honestly, I was surprised, because I felt like Allen Klein was… People have a lot of opinions about him, and I knew him quite well, actually, growing up. And I feel like he was actually quite patient with my dad, considering what they were doing. I mean, their actions were eliciting the ire of the US government and they were associating with people who were certainly on the FBI watch list. And I think Allen was was pretty understanding, actually, in that situation. I mean, I know there’s a lot of things that he did that people consider really bad, and I’m sure that that’s true. But in those phone calls, I kind of felt a little empathy for him, because I’m thinking, man, if I was managing an artist, I’d be really stressed out — let’s put it that way — if they were doing that stunt.
And then the film offers a lot of attention to your mom’s artwork and endeavors. There is the pure art of it, but then, in the recorded phone calls, we hear about what it takes to get those exhibitions up and running behind the scenes. She needs live flies for her artistic purposes, so there’s a practical level of “No, we’ve really gotta get these flies.” And that becomes kind of a running joke of the movie.
It’s hilarious, yeah.
That part’s funny, but at the same time, the film is very respectful of her art.
Yeah. I honestly think that this film sort of shines a light — a flattering and true light — on my mother more than any film I think I’ve seen, actually. So I think that’s one of the great victories of this film is that people are really gonna get to hear my mom speak for herself in an undeniably candid context. There’s no artifice to it. And I think it really shows what she suffered and what she went through, but also how smart she was, and how she was viewing the world at the time.
Well, to ask about your work on the audio … When I looked back on how the soundtrack and DVD were received when some of this material first came out in 1986, some people said they took too much stuff from the matinee “One to One” performance at Madison Square Garden and wondered why there wasn’t more taken from the evening performance, which the cognoscenti feel was better. And you mentioned there were some recording difficulties that had to be smoothed out. So was there a basic problem that had to be overcome, to which you found a solution?
Well, I’m speaking sort of generally — there were a lot of technical little issues, I would say. I believe the matinee show was added last-minute because the (evening) show had sold out unexpectedly in advance. I also think that, at the time, my parents were really into sort of doing things in a raw and not overly rehearsed or contrived manner. So it feels like everything at the time was sort of done last-minute and without a lot of forethought. So, I mean, for example, I think they wound up using the lights that just happened to be there from the Rolling Stones’ concert that had just been there, and none of the lighting had anything to do with what was on stage. And there was no blocking for the stage. There was no plan. So I think the audio engineers, the front-of-house engineers, were probably improvising, and they had to deal with a very big band, a whole bunch of people on stage, and then, probably having a sense that there was gonna be a big sing-along in the end, I think it was just very chaotic. So a lot of mics got moved between the two shows, and I think a lot of instruments weren’t necessarily covered, or there were instruments leaking into microphones that we wish hadn’t been, for example. But luckily, today there’s more you can do to enhance or fix audio problems than there’s ever been before. So it actually was an opportunity for us to really think outside of the box and innovate, I would say, to bring the best out of what was coming off of that stage.
It will be nice to have a home audio version of it too, when that comes out later this year.
I do think it sounds really great. And, to be honest, with the “Mind Games” mixes, it’s a high bar because the record was already mixed by some very lauded engineers at that time, by incredible professionals at very professional studios, with the best musicians. So the bar was very high to try to improve those mixes. But with this, I can confidently say that I believe personally that this is the best those live recordings have ever sounded.
As you say, the performances don’t necessarily sound over-rehearsed within an inch of their life. It’s a very together but spontaneous-sounding performance, pretty much just the way you want to hear those particular songs. It of course makes us wish there’d been full tours of this kind of stuff, but to have this one that did get recorded means something.
Well, I’m psyched. I feel very grateful I got to work on it because, yeah, it is a treasure. Because he did plan on touring and he didn’t get to, so that’s all we’ve got is this concert. And I think it is very beautiful because it is so unlike what people were doing at the time. Everybody was getting into slicker and slicker stuff in the early ‘70s, and I think my dad was already kind of preempting the arrival of punk. You know, he just wanted to go back to basics and be raw and spontaneous and rock ‘n’ roll. And I think it is a very cool thing that he was doing that in a way that was very against the grain, actually.
Is there anything else you’re working on that you could mention? Of course, people wonder what the next major release in the remix and boxed set campaign might be. And there’s your own music.
In October, we are releasing the [“One to One”] boxed set. We’re doing a little box set for the whole concert, which is gonna be cool. I’m allowed to say that. We’ve worked very hard on that. In terms of John and Yoko, that’s the only thing I think I’m supposed to talk about right now. YWe also have a message board that’s called citizenofnutopia.com, which is where the fans all talk, and I’m on there sometimes. And then we also have a word game that we made to accompany the “Mind Games” project that is just kind of for fans only, and that’s called escapetonutopia.com, and you can play that game. It’s for hardcore John and Yoko fans, but it’s really fun. And then, personally, I’m in the middle of finishing the third Delirium album, my band with Les Claypool. That record’s gonna be finished very soon. We’re working on the artwork and stuff, and that’s gonna come out as soon as it’s ready, so I’m excited about that too.
