Lennon was often at his best when his music was stripped down to the bare essentials. "Acoustic" certainly lives up to its stark title; we get 16 tracks that Lennon recorded either as demos or as guide tracks to help the backing musicians to learn a particular song. All of it is drawn from Lennon's solo years and the bulk of this has been released before on "The John Lennon Anthology". The seven tracks that haven't been released before include a stunning acoustic version of "Cold Turkey", an acoustic guitar version of The Beatles reunion track "Real Love" (which saw release on "Anthology" in its piano/vocal version sans overdubs), "Watching the Wheels" Lennon's explanation of his retirement from the circus of rock'n'roll. The most interesting tracks, though, stem from the time of "Plastic Ono Band" with Lennon creating acoustic demo versions of the key tracks from that classic album.

Yoko tries to cover Lennon's entire solo career with selections that appeared on every solo album (with the exception of "Mind Games" and the posthumous "Milk & Honey"). The most dated are the protest songs "John Sinclair" and "Woman is the Nigger of the World". "Luck of the Irish" and "John Sinclair" were recorded live for a political rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1971 while the stunning version of "Imagine" comes from his appearence at the Apollo Theater in 1971. "God" is clearly a home demo (as is "Well Well Well") with probably the worst sound of any of the songs on the CD. Nevertheless, fans will want to have this even if the sound isn't always stellar. Yoko and engineer Rob Stevens have cleaned these up without polishing them with additional overdubs as much as possible. "What You Got" which originally appeared on "Walls & Bridges" is different from the version that appeared on "Anthology" and, with its unfinished temporary lyrics, sounds quite a bit different from the final polished product. It's informed much more by the blues than the version that was released before. "Dear Yoko" has some particularly nice playing by Lennon and his unaffected vocal creates an intimacy missing from the version on "Double Fantasy". One can imagine Lennon having just finished writing the song trying it on for size for the first time. "God" with its slightly different lyrics and "Look at Me" both certainly belong here as both sound terrific have just enough of a variation to make the performances interesting.

The booklet includes guitar tabs for all the songs, lyrics and some rare photos.For Beatles/Lennon fans that didn't want to spring for the "Anthology" boxed set, this disc and the "Wonsaponatime" single disc distillation will nicely fill out their Lennon discography. As for me, it's a treat to hear Lennon perform in such a relaxed environment.

I've been a Lennon fan ever since I can remember...John was always my favorite Beatle and his solo work was phenomenal..After his death I began collecting his catalog and practically have everything he has released and was eagerly anticipating the release of this CD. I picked it up this today at Border's and have been listening to it all afternoon and love it! It's John stripped down to his guitar and listening to classic songs like Imagine, Love and God was very cool indeed! I especially like The Luck of the Irish..which sounds fresh and new! I think for anyone who admired John and his music this will be a treat! As for some of the previous negative reviews..all I can say is, for me..the music speaks for itself..I don't look at it as being cast off demos..etc..the music is great and sung with sincerity and as Yoko put it in the liner notes, from his heart...John was a genius who gave the world his talent and musicianship..God knows we can use a little bit of inspiration now...Give Peace a Chance!!

Oh how I wanted to like this album. I love John Lennon so maybe I was expecting too much. Regardless, Acoustic is a bit of a disppointment to me.

The Bad: Too many of the songs are very poor quality home demo's which were recorded on a cheap cassette recorder. Then, it sounds like they tried to clean up the recordings digitally, but that just made them worse. The result is a weird cancer-kazoo quality to some of the vocals, very hard to listen to.

I was also disappointed by the lack of liner notes. Printing the lyrics with guitar chords is a cool idea, but it would also be nice know when and where the demos were recorded.

The Good: The live performances are wonderful. The "unplugged" version of "Imagine" is absolutely stunning, I fought back tears when I first heard it. "John Sinclair" is well done and may be the only recorded song which features John playing bottle neck slide. The demo for "Watching the Wheels" is wonderful, better in many ways than the single. And the demo of "Working class hero" is also as good or better than the studio recording.

These days you're lucky if you find 3 good songs on a CD, so I gave Acoustic 3 stars. Otherwise, if you have the money, you may want to skip this one and buy the Lennon box set.

O.K. these are demos, and John Lennon would have never had released em' had he lived. Some of these tracks sound like they were recorded under 12 feet of water & some of the songs featured are incomplete and unfinished as well. BUT...I sure am glad somebody out there let us hear them...Nobody is gonna force you to buy this, but, i'm glad to own it...it's, Raw John, But, like most of his work, it's timeless and worth a listen...4 STARS...

Yes, I'll tell you: I worship John Lennon and I love John Lennon. Who couldn't? After all, his kind of talent only comes along once in a billion years or so! I only wish I had met him or experienced him in concert. This CD is a worthy consolation prize, however; it is a fine collection of pure John simply being John: singing from the heart and playing the guitar on his own.

The listener does get three songs of Lennon during two of his live performances in 1971; "The Luck Of The Irish" and "John Sinclair" were performed live in Ann Arbor, Michigan and "Imagine" was recorded during a live performance John gave at The Apollo Theater in the same year. John's rapport with his audiences was excellent; you can tell by the recordings here that they hung on every word he said and sang. Incredible!

Other great songs on this CD include "Dear Yoko," an upbeat love ballad to Yoko Ono; "Well Well Well," "Watching The Wheels," and "Working Class Hero." Indeed, it's impossible to find a song on this CD that isn't great! John's unique ability to perform brought a special type of life and meaning into each and every song and this CD is the proof of this. The listener can sense the remarkable paradox: by avoiding anything fancy in the way of embellishments and presenting his work on this CD in a comparatively plain fashion (just him singing as he plays guitar), John actually succeeded yet again in making his music all the more powerful, compelling and appealing to multitudes of people globally. (Yoko does join John for just one song, "The Luck Of The Irish.")

The quality of the sound is excellent; although Yoko (who produced this album) dedicates this album "to the future guitarists" there is very little in the way of actual liner notes. On the other hand, there are complete lyrics and the actual chords he played on the guitar all the way through each song are written here-a rare and wonderful plus! Chord diagrams are even included. There are wonderful photos of John in both black and white as well as color. Some of John's artwork is reprinted along with a picture of a guitar that Yoko designed for John as a present.

Obviously this CD is a must have for any Lennon fan; and almost certainly the same is true for any Beatles fan. I highly recommend this CD; it's worth much more than the five stars Amazon allows me to give it. Buy it, treasure it, and play it over and over again-John lives on through his music.