Unfinished Music No 2: Life With The Lions Songs Ranked

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. Here are all of Unfinished Music No 2: Life With The Lions songs ranked.

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5. Two Minutes Silence

“I’ve always thought these tracks went together. You hear John and Yoko shuffling to get the microphone onto Yoko’s belly to record the heartbeat, and you hear it churning along like a Hafler Trio track. And suddenly it quits just as you’ve hit the point that George Clinton calls “where repetition becomes sacred.” The vigil for the loss of the baby in the two minutes silence gives you plenty to ponder as the track passes and you hear the ambience of your surroundings.”

See more: John Lennon Albums Ranked

4. No Bed for Beatle John

“Funnily enough the chants in this song are catchy enough that I find myself sometimes humming the melody to this song. This is a nifty trick. I wonder what John & Yoko were thinking about as they were reading these newspaper accounts.”

3. Cambridge 1969

“Yoko sings free jazz (in the same manner that people play it on wind instruments). The sounds she makes are absolutely astonishing. How does she do it without frying her voice? How does she overcome physiological barriers? If you know how to listen to a pitch or timbral curve, she not only calls and responds with her own phrases, she calls and responds with John’s feedback guitar. I once spoke to John Tchicai about this track and he smiled really wide and recalled it very fondly, so they must have been having fun.”

2. Baby’s Heartbeat

“John Lennon used his fame and notoriety to popularize a small, cult-ish part of music. This and other Lennon-Ono collaborations accordingly made the emergence of groups like Sonic Youth possible and stretched the boundaries of music. That said, it doesn’t make sitting down and listening to this album any easier.”

See more: John Lennon Songs Ranked

1. Radio Play

“This is an interesting artistic statement — a glimpse into John & Yoko’s every day life, but there’s a barrier in between you and them — someone playing with a radio. Sometimes my ears strain to hear what’s on the radio, sometimes it’s fascinating to try to hear what John & Yoko are doing at the time. But the point that there *is* a barrier doesn’t go unnoticed.”