ON THIS DATE (49 YEARS AGO) October 24, 1975 – John Lennon: Shaved Fish is released. # ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 5/5 # Allmusic 4.5/5 stars Shaved Fish is a compilation album by John Lennon, released on October 24, 1975 in the UK (October 20 in the US). It reached #12 on the Billboard 200 Top LP's chart, and #5 on the UK Albums chart. ‘The record company didn’t even want to it out. I put Shaved Fish together of all the singles because if I didn’t do it nobody else would and that was just for my own personal history and for anybody else who cared to buy the record, it wasn’t an effort really to – just to conserve my work because in 40 years I want to look back on it and be able to find it. You know because ‘Cold Turkey’ isn’t a big, big, big hit the record company will probably lose the tape. I realised that some of the singles, the record company would lose the tape, you know, the record would be wiped off the face of the earth by disinterest. They wouldn’t even know where the fucking tape was if you asked them for it now. I had a real trouble finding the tapes to ‘Give Peace a Chance’ and ‘Cold Turkey’ and ‘Woman is the Nigger’ because they weren’t big hits. They were known but they didn’t sell millions of records. I couldn’t even sing ‘Woman is the Nigger’, I was on Dick Cavett. They wouldn’t let me say the word “nigger”. Right. There was a big controversy about ‘Woman is the Nigger’. The stations wouldn’t play it. The people were disgusted and I mean this is only 1971, right.’ – John Lennon, 1980 The compilation includes many of Lennon's most popular solo recordings, five of which had not yet appeared on an album: "Cold Turkey," "Instant Karma!," "Power to the People," the holiday single "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)," and "Give Peace a Chance." The latter appeared in truncated form, split to begin side one and end side two. Eight of these singles made the Top 40 on the Billboard chart, with "Whatever Gets You thru the Night" going to number 1; five made the Top Ten in the United Kingdom. "Imagine," never a single in the UK, was issued as such concurrent to the release of this album, going to number 5 in the UK chart. Its release came less than three weeks after the resolution of Lennon's long-running immigration dispute and the birth of Sean Lennon. The name of the album originates from the Japanese food katsuobushi, a kind of dried fish. _________ ORIGINAL ROLLING STONE REVIEW Shaved Fish is a collection of singles, some of them hits, released during John Lennon's post-Beatles career (1969-present). Ordinarily, such Christmas gift ideas aren't worth writing about but, as with almost everything else Lennon has done, Shaved Fish is different. There is nothing spectacularly unfound about the music here, although finally having an LP with "Instant Karma" -- Lennon's best solo track and as full a statement of the rock philosophy as we are likely to get from anyone -- is a significant event in my house. One is first drawn to the package, a typically mad collage of literal interpretations of the 11 tracks here -- "Instant Karma!" is represented by a jar, as though it were a name-brand pharmaceutical -- and to the lyric sheet, which offers the most convincing evidence yet of Lennon's verbal felicity. More than that, however, the feeling of this record is so diffuse that it probably does present an accurate overview of Lennon's confused career since leaving the Beatles. The best tracks are obsessed, driven by a special idea about the usefulness of rock & roll, as on "Instant Karma!," "Cold Turkey," "Imagine" and even "Mother." Although "Give Peace a Chance" is the best example extant of Lennon's talent for random lyric writing, neither it, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" nor "Power To The People" has held up. Unlike Dylan's best topical songs ("George Jackson," say), or even the Beatles' "Revolution." Lennon's polemics were entirely too ad hoc to last beyond the era in which they were made. Nevertheless, there is a cohesion of style present in these which dwindles in the later parts of the record: "Mind Games," "Whatever Gets You thru the Night" and "#9 Dream" are all without the purpose of his best work. This is convincing evidence, then, not only of John Lennon's genius but of his continuing career difficulty. Hopefully, as the cover drawing for "Power to the People" suggests, the green card he'll be receiving from Immigration will resolve that crisis happily. ~ Dave Marsh (December 18, 1975) TRACKS: All songs by John Lennon, except where noted. Side one 1 Give Peace a Chance - 0:57 2 Cold Turkey - 5:01 3 Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) - 3:21 4 Power to the People - 3:21 5 Mother - 5:03 6 Woman Is the N***er of the World (Lennon, Yoko Ono) - 4:37 Side two 1 Imagine - 3:02 2 Whatever Gets You thru the Night - 3:03 3 Mind Games - 4:12 4 #9 Dream - 4:47 5 Happy Xmas (War Is Over)/Give Peace a Chance (Reprise) (Lennon, Ono) - 4:15 #thebeatles #beatles #johnlennon #paulmccartney #georgeharrison #ringostarr All Things Music Plus