Yoko Ono to re-release ‘Season of Glass’ to celebrate 45th anniversary
Yoko Ono has announced plans to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Season of Glass by re-releasing the classic album.
Season of Glass will be made available once again this summer on expanded CD and digital versions, as well as on black and limited quantities of white vinyl for the first time in more than 45 years. No specific release date has yet been confirmed.
The record was Yoko’s first album following the tragic murder of her husband and creative partner, John Lennon, outside the Dakota Building in New York in 1980.
On the album, which was released just seven months after his death, Yoko directly deals with the pain and grief that his senseless murder had caused her.
In an interview with Newsweek in 1982, Yoko said of the emotional album, “Season of Glass was really just being me, I suppose. Sort of, it was like a primal scream in a way; you know, something happened in my life, and I just had to say it. And I think it was therapeutic for me more than anything else. And I was pretty honest, I suppose.”
A decade later, in the liner notes of 1992’s ONOBOX, Yoko confessed that “my voice kept cracking while I recorded the songs” due to the emotional weight attached.
She also revealed, “I finally thought maybe I shouldn’t put the album out. Then it occurred to me there were probably many people in the world whose voices were cracking for many reasons. I realized my songs were the songs of the desperate. It was all right to show myself as how I was.”
The album cover is also particularly striking, depicting Lennon’s blood-soaked glasses that he wore when he was murdered. Although Geffen Records were reluctant to release the album unless the artwork changed, Ono refused to back down.
Ono explained of the graphic album cover, “I felt like a person soaked in blood coming into a living room full of people and reporting that my husband was dead, his body was taken away, and the pair of glasses were the only thing I had managed to salvage – and people looking at me saying it was in bad taste to show the glasses to them.”
To date, Season of Glass is the highest-charting album of Yoko’s career.
Following the announcement, which coincides with Ono’s 93rd birthday, ‘Walking on Thin Ice’ has been made available to stream for the first time.
The full track listing is available to view below.
Yoko Ono – Season of Glass re-release tracklisting:
- ‘Goodbye Sadness’
- ‘Mindweaver’
- ‘Even When You’re Far Away’
- ‘Nobody Sees Me Like You Do’
- ‘Turn of the Wheel’
- ‘Dogtown’
- ‘Silver Horse’
- ‘I Don’t Know Why’
- ‘Extension 33’
- ‘No, No, No’
- ‘Will You Touch Me’
- ‘She Gets Down on Her Knees’
- ‘Toyboat’
- ‘Mother of the Universe’
CD/Digital Bonus Tracks
- ‘Walking On Thin Ice’
- ‘I Don’t Know Why’ (Demo)
- ‘Dogtown’ (Phil Spector Mix)
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