John Lennon - Gimme Some Truth [VHS]

The film's horizons expand with a casual montage of Lennon's celebrity lifestyle, including New York party footage (by film theorist Jonas Mekas) featuring such guests as Miles Davis, Andy Warhol and Jack Nicholson. Excerpts of a 1971 BBC interview reveal John and Yoko at their most thoughtful, discussing socio-sexual issues that remain compellingly relevant. But the true value of Gimme Some Truth remains in the creation of music at the Lennons' estate at Tittenhurst Park, Ascot, England. The ballad "Imagine" is followed from rawness to completion, and the track-by-track progress is highlighted by "Jealous Guy" (after which Lennon playfully compliments Spector's studio wizardry), and especially "Gimme Some Truth", which alternates between full mix and isolated vocal track. With George Harrison on guitar, Lennon freely admits that "How Do You Sleep?" is a deliberately "nasty" criticism of Paul McCartney, but this remarkable film never dwells on negatives. A precious record of John Lennon's time on earth, Gimme Some Truth is as honest as it is entertaining. And while purists may object to the DVD's remastered sound--which was carefully remixed for Dolby Digital 5.1-channel stereo at Abbey Road studios--few would deny that this film is an important and illuminating document that any John Lennon fan will cherish. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

A Deff must for a lennon fan.


Gimme some truth   June 12, 2003
timbo (London, UK)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

An excellent fly on the wall rockumentary on John's Imagine album.

Filmed in 1971 just a year after the Beatles breakup you can see there is still much hurt in the air from the split.

Along with George Harrison who sits in on the sessions also,
we see John and George working on the thinly veiled song about Paul in the song "How do you Sleep".
Yes, the wounds were still very much open during these recording sessions!

It is pretty obvious that the pressure is very much on John during this film as he blows up a few times, and on one occasion he gives an hapless recording engineer a load of stick for replaying the wrong section of a track that he is overdubbing with Phil Spector.

Despite the pressure in the studio at the time, there are some softer and truly beautiful moments in this film when we see John working on the tracks "How?" and "Oh my Love".

Of course the big climax of this film is the last track on the disc with John performing Imagine, it's almost worth buying the DVD for that one clip alone!

Yes, 10 out of 10 for this movie!


We Knew He Was GOD anyway!!   December 17, 2000
Mr. A. Downes (United Kingdom)
7 out of 9 found this review helpful

This DVD film highlights the true genius of John Lennon. Imagine was and still is a classic LP... Long live John Lennon, the genius.