Footage recorded of John Lennon and Yoko Ono from 1968 has been released for the first time in the new music video for ‘You Are Here’ ahead of the arrival of an expanded boxset edition of Mind Games.
The upcoming project is set for release on July 12th through Universal Music, and promises to include previously unreleased outtakes, unadulterated versions, instrumentals, stripped down mixes, and even studio chatter recorded at New York City’s Record Plant studios in 1973.
Mind Games, Lennon’s fourth album as a solo artist, was recorded at a troubling time in his personal life, which highly inspired the work on the LP. Not only had Lennon separated from Ono, which led to him veering into chaos, but authorities in the United States were also trying to deport him from the country.
Nevertheless, ‘You Are Here’ captures the love he still had for Ono, and the new video provides a sneak behind the curtain into their personal lives. The footage was filmed on June 30th, 1968, at London’s Robert Fraser Gallery when Lennon was preparing to unveil his first major art show, also titled You Are Here.
At the time, The Beatles were in the middle of recording The White Album, and the art show provided him with another avenue to express his creativity. The new video features film recorded by William Wareing and Dick Lorriemore, which has been restored by the Lenono Film Archives.
Lennon once explained of the exhibition: “It consisted of a bare gallery and a big white canvas that was round and it just had my writing on it: ‘you are here’ and I dedicated it to Yoko. I wrote to a lot of charities telling them about the exhibition. I had a lot of nice letters and a lot of charity boxes back. There are no hidden secrets. My art is in fact displaying these boxes for charity.”
Others who feature in the new video for ‘You Are Here’ include Derek Taylor, Jill Johnston, Kevin Harrington, Neil Aspinall, Richard DiLello, and Robert Fraser, who owned the gallery that homed the exhibition.
While ‘You Are Here’ seems a simple idea, Lennon once said it was a mantra that was “more than a joke”, stating, “A lot of people went to India to find out they were here. Like [Timothy] Leary’s friend Richard Alpert [Ram Dass] went to India and saw all the gurus, chasing all over the place, and all the gurus said to him was, ‘Remember, be here now’. That’s all them gurus will ever tell you. Remember this moment now.”
The new edition of Mind Games is set to be released in a variety of formats, ranging from digital to a deluxe boxset that includes Blu-Ray, but there is also a super limited release which has been limited to 1100 copies worldwide.
Ono has given her full support to the project, which Sean Ono Lennon has helped create. Upon its announcement, she stated the concept of Mind Games was “before its time” but believes in 2024 that “people would understand it”.
