John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Unfinished Music No.1 & 2 (1968-1969) [Reissue 2016]

Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins is the first of three experimental albums released by John Lennon and Yoko Ono on Apple Records. It was the result of an all-night session of musical experimentation with Yoko in John's home studio at Kenwood, while his wife, Cynthia Lennon, was on holiday in Greece. Lennon and Ono's 1968 debut recording is known not only for its avant-garde content, but also for its cover which features the couple naked. This made the album controversial to both the public and the parent record company EMI, which refused to distribute it. In an attempt to avoid controversy, the LP record was sold in a brown paper bag, and distributed by Track and Tetragrammaton in the United Kingdom and the United States respectively. Two Virgins, while failing to chart in the UK, reached number 124 in the US. The album was followed six months later by Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions.

Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions is the second of three experimental albums of avant-garde music by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, released in May 1969 on Zapple, a sub label of Apple. It was a successor to 1968's highly controversial Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, and was followed by the Wedding Album. The album peaked in the United States at number 174, 50 places lower than the previous album. The album, whose title is a play on words of the BBC Radio show Life with The Lyons, was recorded at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London and live at Cambridge University, in November 1968 and March 1969, respectively. The Cambridge performance, to which Ono had been invited and to which she brought Lennon, was Lennon and Ono's second as a couple. A few of the album's tracks were previewed by the public, thanks to Aspen magazine. The album was remastered in 1997.