John and Yoko | Wedding Album

Last week it was announced that Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s Wedding Album will be reissued on March 22nd, to coincide with their 50th wedding anniversary. The disc will be released via Secretly Canadian, in partnership with Chimera Music, with a "faithful recreation" of the original artwork. In addition to the CD and white vinyl reissue,  it will also be made available as a digital download, apparently for the first time. It is available to pre-order now, here.

Wedding Album is the third and final record from a series of experimental albums that served as documents of Lennon and Ono's life together. Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins marked the beginning of their romantic and artistic partnership, and Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions documented their 1968 stay in London's Queen Charlotte Hospital, where Ono suffered a miscarriage.

Wedding Album was released on Apple records in October 1969, credited only to John and Yoko, without their last names listed. The disk commemorated their wedding in Gibraltar on 20 March 1969, and subsequent honeymoon.

It was released as an elaborate box set, designed by John Kosh, who was responsible for the Beatles'  Abbey Road album cover (released a month prior) and would go on to work with Lennon and Ono on the War is Over [If You Want It] campaign. The box included photographs, drawings by Lennon, a reproduction of their marriage certificate, a 16-page booklet of press clippings and a picture of a slice of wedding cake, possibly as a nod to Oldenburg's 1966 work Wedding Souvenir.

"It was like our sharing our wedding with whoever wanted to share it with us. We didn't expect a hit record out of it... that's why we called it Wedding Album. You know, people make a wedding album, show it to the relatives when they come round. Well, our relatives are the... what you call fans, or people that follow us outside. So that was our way of letting them join in on the wedding," Lennon told the BBC in 1980.

The A-side of the record featured "John & Yoko", a 22:41 recording made in April 1969, of Lennon and Ono calling out each other's names over the sound of their heartbeats. The b-side, "Amsterdam" was recorded at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, a month prior. It consists of dialogue from their Bed-In campaign for peace, including interviews, conversations and snippets of songs ("Goodbye Amsterdam Goodbye", "John John (Let's Hope For Peace)", "Grow Your Hair", and a brief excerpt of the Beatles' "Good Night", performed a cappella).

Reviews were terrible and sales were poor.

The Melody Maker newspaper ran a front cover piece by Richard Williams, who mistook the test pressings he received as review copies for the final album. Critics were sent two single-sided LPs with the contents of the original single LP on the A-sides, and test-tone signals on the other. His review included the both "John & Yoko" and "Amsterdam", but also the engineer's test signals, which he mistook for intended content. He noted that "...constant listening reveals a curious point: the pitch of the tones alters frequency, but only by microtones or, at most, a semitone. This oscillation produces an almost subliminal, uneven 'beat' which maintains interest. On a more basic level, you could have a ball by improvising your very own raga, plainsong, or even Gaelic mouth music against the drone."

Lennon and Ono dispatched a telegram of thanks and congratulations to the critic:

DEAR RICHARD THANK YOU FOR YOUR FANTASTIC REVIEW OF OUR WEDDING ALBUM INCLUDING C-AND-D SIDES. WE ARE CONSIDERING IT FOR OUR NEXT RELEASE. MAYBE YOU ARE RIGHT IN SAYING THAT THEY ARE THE BEST SIDES STOP WE BOTH FEEL THAT THIS IS THE FIRST TIME A CRITIC TOPPED THE ARTIST. WE ARE NOT JOKING. LOVE AND PEACE STOP JOHN AND YOKO LENNON.