Emerald City Video

A new box set of John Lennon recordings has unearthed an official version of one of folk music’s most famous bootlegs: a brief jam session between Lennon and folk singer Phil Ochs.

Ochs, who passed away in 1976, takes lead on the four songs, playing some of his best-loved tracks while Lennon joins in on steel guitar. Unofficial recordings of the session have been in circulation for years, but the quality was very poor. Now, for the first time, fans can hear the songs in near-studio quality…but there’s a catch.

If you want to actually own the songs, you’ll have to pay big. The Ochs/Lennon collaboration tracks are part of a nine-disc mega-set of John Lennon’s live and rare recordings, titled Power to the People. The set will run you around $200 for a physical copy, or $79.99 for a digital copy, on Amazon — and that pricing is roughly in line with what you would pay at an indie store or on iTunes.

Ochs fans who have no interest in the larger Lennon box set can snag MP3 copies of the four tracks — “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” “Joe Hill,” “Chords of Fame,” and “Ringing of Revolution” — for $1.29 each on Amazon and iTunes.

Sadly, the official record excises the chatting that Ochs and Lennon engaged in between songs — a defining characteristic of the unofficial versions of these songs. Supposedly, legendary activist Jerry Rubin joined in on drums for part of the jam session. Lennon, Ochs, and Rubin were all in Ann Arbor, Michigan in December 1971 for the Free John Sinclair Concert. Sinclair, who was released shortly after the concert, had been sentenced to 10 years for possession of a small amount of marijuana.

Lennon’s songs from the concert are also available on the Power to the People set. The other artists — including Ochs, Bob Seger, and Stevie Wonder — do not appear on the album.

Ochs’s love for the Beatles is well-established; he even covered their song “I Should Have Known Better,” a track available on The Broadside Tapes.