Oil Well Bootlegs - RSC CD: John Lennon – San Francisco Bay Oil Well

John Lennon – San Francisco Bay
Oil Well – RSC 89 CD

1. Imagine (3:09)
2. Crippled Inside (3:50)
3. Jealous Guy (4:07)
4. It´s So Hard (2:28)
5. How Do You Sleep #1 (8:10)
6. Gimme Some Truth (3:39)
7. Oh My Love (2:26)
8. How Do You Sleep #2 (5:40)
9. How (3:44)
10. Oh Yoko (5:50)
11. San Francisco Bay Blues (0:47)
Total playing time 43:50

Note
All songs by John Lennon
~~Live in San Francisco, CA - August 2, 1969~~
All tracks recorded in May-June, 1971 in UK during Imagine sessions.

Lineup
John Lennon – vocals (all), piano, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, whistling, harmonica
George Harrison – dobro, slide guitar, electric guitar
Nicky Hopkins – tack piano, piano, electric piano
Klaus Voormann – bass guitar, double bass
Alan White – drums, vibraphone, Tibetan cymbals
Jim Keltner – drums
Jim Gordon – drums
King Curtis – saxophone
John Barham – harmonium, vibraphone
Joey Molland, Tom Evans – acoustic guitar
John Tout - piano (incorrectly credited as playing "acoustic guitar")
Ted Turner – acoustic guitar
Rod Linton – acoustic guitar
Andy Davis – acoustic guitar
Mike Pinder – tambourine
Steve Brendell – double bass, maracas
Phil Spector – harmony vocal
The Flux Fiddlers (members of the New York Philharmonic) – orchestral strings

Imagine outtakes recorded in May to June 1971 in UK.
This Oil Well version has a fine cover, fine quality. Limited to 200 copies only. Due to its rarity and good quality, this disc is recommended.
Audio quality:

Quality content:

© Official released material:
Tracks 1,2,3,4,6,9,10 released on: Imagine (The Ultimate Collection - 4CD Box-Set) 2018
Tracks 5,7,8,11 from Imagine... All the Outtakes The Alternate Album: Vigotone

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Recording and structur of Imagine.
The first songs, "It's So Hard" and "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier", were recorded in February 1971 at Abbey Road Studios, during sessions for Lennon's single "Power to the People". (Other sources give the location as Ascot, however.) A cover of The Olympics' 1958 song "Well (Baby Please Don't Go)", later released on John Lennon Anthology, was recorded on 16 February. Lennon would choose to remake "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier" on 24 May 1971, the opening day of the main album sessions.

Lennon enlisted help from Nicky Hopkins, members of the Apple band Badfinger, Alan White and Jim Keltner. George Harrison would also drop by to contribute lead guitar parts on various songs. Recording for the album started on 24 May at Ascot Sound Studios. Lennon showed the musicians a song that he had recently written, the album's title track "Imagine". Besides recording the tracks that would end up on the album, also recorded during the sessions was the unreleased song "San Francisco Bay Blues", a demo for a track that would later turn up in complete form on Lennon's Mind Games album, as "Aisumasen (I'm Sorry)", and a demo of "I'm the Greatest".

Lennon and Ono flew to New York on 3 July to continue sessions for the album the next day,
at Record Plant. Although the basic tracks for Imagine were initially recorded at Ascot
Sound Studios, many of the instruments were re-recorded at the Record Plant in New York City,
where strings and saxophone by King Curtis were also added. The tracks that were finished at
Record Plant are: "It's So Hard", "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier" and "How Do You Sleep?"

As on his last album, Phil Spector joined Lennon and Yoko Ono as co-producer on Imagine.
Extensive footage of the sessions, showing the evolution of some of the songs, was originally
filmed and titled Working Class Hero before being shelved. Footage of "Gimme Some Truth"
aired as part of the BBC TV show The Old Grey Whistle Test on 12 December 1972. Bits of
footage were subsequently released as part of the documentary film Imagine: John Lennon

Imagine BBC Review
John Lennon’s most famous album is not what it seems. A huge commercial success both upon its release and immediately after Lennon’s murder, Imagine is generally seen as the star’s inevitable return to conventional pop after the ferocious flurry of avant-garde experiments, protest singles, primal confessionals and live rave-ups of the Yoko Ono-led 1968-70 period. But, beyond the title-track and the presence of Phil Spector and George Harrison, Imagine is a weird, ramshackle collection of eclectic gems that uniquely links Lennon the raging politico (and lippy bitch) with Lennon the peace-loving dreamer and adoring husband.

So, among the jams and co-producer Spector’s clever mix of orchestral pomp and punkish lo-fi, the listener’s interest in these 10 songs is inevitably drawn toward five of the most notable songs of Lennon’s career. Gimme Some Truth is one of the greatest protest songs ever recorded, a glistening product of the tension between Lennon’s rapier-wit fury at the hypocrisy of political leaders, and the sheer Beatle-esque beauty of melody and arrangement. How? is both beautiful and profound; a calm-after-the-storm orchestral ballad that captures the eternal confusion of Being Human with humble grace.

If you only know Jealous Guy as Roxy Music’s worst-ever record, then the original, with its courageous and accurate portrayal of male neediness and insecurity, will be a tear-jerking shock. And How Do You Sleep?’s attack on Paul McCartney is still a bizarre listen, the track’s lazy, laconic white soul stroll hitting Lennon’s vicious indiscretions home with a swaggering arrogance.

And, of course, there’s Imagine. Imagine you hadn’t heard it 5,000 times already, and been told to hear it as either the 20th century’s greatest hymn to human transcendence, or a sickening ode to millionaire hypocrisy and complacency. Then what you might hear, beneath the clamour, is the rough prettiness of the piano, the humility of the vocal, the skill of the arrangement and song craft. Good luck with that.

Elsewhere, Crippled Inside and I Don’t Wanna Be a Soldier Mama are enjoyable roots-rock jams masquerading as protest song, Oh My Love and Oh Yoko! are the first of many simpering tributes to Lennon’s bird, and It’s So Hard is a sexual double-entendre in search of a decent tune. Sprinkled among the benchmark Lennon songs listed above, they make for an album of abruptly shifting moods and a sense of fun and mischief that were fated to never appear again within Lennon’s work. It’s this spontaneity and joy that makes Imagine Lennon’s most popular solo album, if not his best.