Unfinished Music #2: Life With... Review

07/18/2005 5:48 PM, AMG


John Lennon and Yoko Ono's second collaborative album consists of five tracks: all of side one is taken up by "Cambridge 1969," a live recording at Lady Mitchell Hall in Cambridge of Lennon playing an electric guitar backup to Ono's singing and screaming. Side two includes an a cappella rendering by Ono of "No Bed for Beatle John," which discusses the refusal of a hospital to give Lennon a bed so he could stay during his wife's troubled pregnancy; "Baby's Heartbeat," which is what it says it is; "Two Minutes Silence" in commemoration of Ono's miscarriage, which also is what it says it is; and "Radio Play," 12 minutes of a radio dial being turned back and forth to pick up random stations. If, as they suggested, their lives were their art, then this is, too. Maybe. [The 1997 CD reissue adds two bonus tracks: a previously unreleased version of Ono's "Song for John," and the previously unreleased "Mulberry," which is nine minutes of Yoko's vocal improv backed by careening, atonal guitar runs.] ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide