Mid Games: Why did Sean Lennon create an elaborate piece of art for an album that no one cares about?
The beautiful $1350.00 “Mind Games” box is a stunning tribute to his parents that has no reason to exist.
I have been procrastinating about writing this because I’m like, “Josh, don’t be a hater!” But, I am a hater when called for, which, in all honesty, is just another word for a realist. This isn’t a “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” thing because if you perceive what comes next as “not nice,” that’s on you.
Sean Lennon was born into wealth and privilege, not unlike Donald Trump. Sean has zero, and I mean Z-E-R-O, idea of what it is like to be an ordinary person. The recently circulated pictures of Sean’s ninth birthday party, where Steve Jobs came over to the Dakota and gifted him an early Apple computer, act as one small example of this.
I wonder if Steve Jobs’ kids even had that experience!
Now that I have comparing Sean Lennon to Donald Trump out of the way, I will apologize for that, because I am only referring to the born into wealth and privilege thing. I don’t have any belief that Sean is a thieving, immoral grifter.
Let’s talk about Mind Games, or more specifically, the recently released deluxe reissue of this John Lennon solo album from 1973. Usually, in a piece like this, one would say, “the John Lennon classic solo album,” but I don’t, because it’s not!
I challenge anyone who calls themselves a John Lennon fan to name two songs from Mind Games. To get really real, I have a feeling that if I asked a fan to name one song from Mind Games, some might not think to name the song “Mind Games”!
This album is not a record that anyone points to when looking to make a case for the validity of the solo career of John Lennon.
To be clear, I am a bigger John Lennon fan than most.
John’s murder in 1980, when I was eight years old, was a defining moment of my childhood. I always thought of John as my favorite Beatle. As I began struggling in adolescence with pain, identity, and abuse, his Plastic Ono Band and Imagine albums gave me comfort and something to relate to.
I still love John, but as I have gotten older, I see him, rightfully, as a flawed person. John’s neglect of his first son, Julian Lennon, angers me, and when he “figured out fatherhood” when Sean came along, that made me even angrier.
Men suck!
Because of this, I have always had a soft spot for Julian, and when he began his career as an artist and had some mainstream hits right out of the gate, I was happy for him.
Plus, those songs, “Valotte,” “Too Late For Goodbyes,” and later, “Stick Around,” from his second album, were legit earworms that hit the charts. I include the latter song, even though it was a lesser hit, because the bass line slaps and the melody on the chorus gives me chills.
Some may say Julian’s success at the time was due to our nostalgia, grief, and the uncanny resemblance of Julian’s voice to his father’s, but catchy songs don’t lie. If this similar voice theory were true, Sean could have done the same.
Sean has not done the same.
In his twenties, Sean aligned himself with the Beastie Boys label Grand Royal to release his Into The Sun album, which plays as the kind of standard indie singer-songwriter fare that Ben Lee already did in a much better version on Grand Royal a few years earlier with his band Noise Addict, and continues to do to this day because he is an actual songwriter.
When you’re Sean, you can just “try things out,” ya know? If it works, great. If not, hey, “I’m Sean Lennon.”
I really don’t have anything against Sean personally (despite some cancel-adjacent behavior online), but I do call it like I see it when it comes to wealthy, privileged people who aren’t explicitly contrite about these circumstances and extraordinarily generous by giving their wealth away via philanthropy and employing poor artists who seek work and exposure.
So that brings us to the expansive Mind Games project for which Sean is given sole “Produced By” credit. Frankly, I have never seen a reissue of this magnitude. The project management demands to pull off something like this take immense resources, commitment, organization, and vision.
Even with his access to masters, raw materials, and contemporaneous participants in the creation of the Mind Games album, this art piece (there is no other appropriate description) is a triumph.
As expected, there are many permutations of this reissue available that don’t require a $1350.00 investment, and even those, all the way down to the free streaming options, are interesting, mostly because they take middling material from John and make it more interesting through Sean. When I say this, I am not talking about remixing or remastering efforts to enhance the original recordings and bring them “up to date.”
What has fascinated me most about the John Lennon reissues in general, but especially here, are the portions of the collection known as the Elemental Mixes and Elements Mixes, the first being versions of the tracks with John’s original vocals over stripped-back mixes of the instrumentation, and the second (my favorites) being instrumental versions of the songs.
With these, instead of merely removing John’s vocals, the Elements Mixes have also been given individual reexaminations from the ground up. The Elements Mix of “Mind Games,” for instance, consists of the organ track from the song only. Who knew that this cut could sound like a hymnal, but it does. It is beautiful!
Kudos to Sean for having the guts to present the song this way.
This aspect is what I am here to applaud Sean for because, while this project is based around a rightly overlooked, inconsequential, and hardly popular album in John Lennon’s solo catalog, the record is used as a platform for a mind-blowing array of physical objects and sounds.
Without getting into a review of this packaging and material – plenty of more descriptive and less judgmental takes can be found elsewhere – it is the two recreations of physical art pieces by Yoko Ono and John Lennon that are the most exciting aspects of the $1350.00 box.
Ignoring that this presentation seems to rewrite history by positioning Yoko as the co-creator of Mind Games, the idea of a reproduction of a Yoko art piece, officially authorized by Yoko, occupying my physical space for the rest of my life is quite alluring.
Yes, I am one of those people who knows that Yoko was already a successful artist before The Beatles, which is why Paul was interested in her to begin with and sent John to her show. If you are a misogynistic piece of shit who doesn’t know the truth, here it is: Yoko is a more accomplished artistic mind than the other Beatles. Today I am starting the argument that The Beatles broke up Yoko. Let’s go!
Since this $1350.00 version of Mind Games is already sold out, I see no reason to purchase the music alone in any physical form unless you are a vinyl collector with disposable cash and shelf space. I’m sure original issue vinyl copies of the Mind Games album can be found used for a few bucks. More later on why even vinyl people might want to pass on this.
The idea to recreate Yoko Ono’s 1966 work “Danger Box” (a 13-inch perspex cube) to house the collection is a brilliant idea. A reproduction of John’s 1968 piece “You Are Here” (a 12-inch circular canvas) is similarly stunning.
I didn’t know anything about this work previously so even if I can’t own one, I am glad to have been informed. Does anyone talk much about John’s artwork outside of rock music other than to throw shade on Two Virgins? This box is a treat for anyone who might be more interested in aspects of John’s artistic career that have not been given much attention than they are in the Mind Games album itself.
The usual photo books, recording diaries, and ephemera are also included, and from the looks and analysis of numerous in-depth unboxing videos, all are beautiful and rendered in high quality. Again, more about the vinyl below!
The rest of the cake taken here belongs to two maps that stand as incredible art pieces on their own. So much so that standalone versions of these two items quickly sold out and are now in a second run.
Designed by map portrait artist Ed Fairburn, the maps are described on the John Lennon official website as “exclusive portrait fold-out 46-inch-square maps of Liverpool (John) and Tokyo (Yoko),” which “contain over 700 locations of interest, highlighted in Ultraviolet ink and every location detailed in accompanying booklets.”
At only $30 a piece, these are a steal!
Okay, wow. I feel like some salesperson with all of that descriptive language that you could have just read on John Lennon’s website. I feel refreshed and can get back to picking on Sean.
The vinyl.
So, yeah, of course, all of the aforementioned music (the Mind Games album, Elemental Mixes, Elements Mixes, etc.) is available in this box on vinyl. Various other, less expensive standalone vinyl variations are also available, too. You know the deal about how albums are released these days, yes?!
Update: Yet another three-LP set, called the “Meditation Mixes” (a “huge passion project for Sean Ono Lennon” according to the sales page), consisting of audio that was previously available only on the meditation app Luminate (funny that to this day, the Lennon camp rejects Transcendental Meditation, which I have practiced for over a decade, so I am biased and pissed!) will be made available for sale on October 11, 2024 for a cool $79.98. Looks nice. Looks unnecessary.
What we have seen in the years since vinyl came back into vogue as a preferred medium for collectors who want to acquire objects without making audio quality a priority is an inferior product.
If all the consumer wants is a pretty physical representation of the music to listen to without much fuss over what emerges from the speakers of a budget audio system, that’s fine. We eat with our eyes. We listen with our eyes, too, I guess?
As the erstwhile Parlogram channel on YouTube details, the quality of the vinyl in the Mind Games box, the part that contains the music, i.e., the entire reason for any of this, comes up short.
Clearly stated as “Produced by Sean Ono Lennon” (I am so sorry, but I even find his name pretentious, you guys. Oh my god, I’m so bad! I hate typing it!), this misstep is squarely on Sean’s shoulders.
My impression of all of this is that the Mind Games project is Sean’s opportunity to flex, and in concept and overall execution, this set is a flex, even with the unlimited resources that Sean has at his disposal to create it.
Is it fan fiction for me to think Sean is competing with Dhani Harrison’s insane All Things Must Pass box from 2021? That box was also indulgent but was based on what many consider the greatest of all post-Beatles solo albums.
So, how did Sean come up “just okay” with the core of this cube?
In addition to enjoying unboxing videos on YouTube (Hey, I don’t pay for Netflix!), I also love the audiophile nerds who will spend hundreds on limited vinyl reissues from companies like Acoustic Sounds (putting Mobile Fidelity on their heels), who have gone so far as to develop their own vinyl formulation to arrive at what fans of their work often call the best pressings of classic albums that can be found anywhere.
Acoustic Sounds sources master tapes and the most talented and legendary mastering engineers to cut new lacquers, especially for use in producing ultra-high-quality pressings. How is it possible that Sean didn’t bother to have a conversation with them about cutting the vinyl for these 1100 limited edition boxes?
Without knowing for sure, my impression of this entire endeavor is that Sean found the Mind Games project to be an opportunity to spend millions having fun indulging his creative impulses and using his father’s work as both a jumping-off point and a justification.
I mean, bro can do what he wants, but overall, I get the feeling that “Produced by Sean Ono Lennon” is the point I am supposed to take away from this.
It is as if Sean realized, like me, that all of this work was for an album that no one really cares about anyway. I know that sounds harsh but isn’t that the point I am making here?!
It sounds harsh!