When the John Lennon Estate announced the release of the Power To The People deluxe box set, much of the attention naturally went to the remastered tracks, rare recordings, and newly unearthed video content. But among the archival treasures is something far less conventional—a quirky, avant-garde experiment called Clock. Filmed by John Lennon in 1971 during the creation of Imagine, Clock is as much a window into Lennon’s restless creativity as it is a document of the day-to-day rhythm of his life with Yoko Ono.
On 10 September 1971, Lennon and Ono were living at the St. Regis Hotel in New York, where they were editing and shooting scenes for the Imagine film. On that particular day, before heading out to Staten Island to capture the beach sequences that would form part of Imagine, the pair turned their attention to two new short films: Ono’s Freedom and Lennon’s Clock.
Where Freedom was Yoko’s idea—an intimate shot of a woman struggling to escape the confines of a bra—Clock was Lennon’s playful counterpoint. His concept was simple but oddly profound: film a carriage clock for one uninterrupted hour, with himself and Yoko reflected in the mirror, occasionally interacting with the camera. Lennon imagined the piece functioning literally as a clock. If viewers watched the film, different cues at each quarter-hour would tell them where they were in time.
In the film, Lennon sets the tone early. He explains to Yoko and anyone else listening that it is not meant to be “a proper movie” but rather a living timepiece. “It’s gonna be a clock, you know, so it’s not like a proper movie. It’ll just be like a background,” Lennon says in the dialogue captured on tape. He lays out the plan: at quarter past, someone should walk through the frame. At half past, another action should occur. At twenty-to, he lights Yoko’s cigarette. At quarter-to, he breaks a lamp, laughing at the absurdity. Finally, when the clock strikes the hour, he suggests they go completely mad and run out of the room.
This blend of mundane activity, planned spontaneity, and Lennon’s natural charm makes the film feel like a precursor to reality television—unguarded moments given structure by the passage of time.
If Clock was meant to be an art film about time, it also became a musical session. Throughout the hour, Lennon casually picked up his guitar and sang. Among the songs he performed was Carl Perkins’ Honey Don’t, a rockabilly staple best known to Beatles fans from Ringo Starr’s version on Beatles for Sale. Lennon’s stripped-down, off-the-cuff performance of Honey Don’t became one of twenty songs from the Clock soundtrack to make it into the Power To The People deluxe edition.
Watch John Lennon Performing Honey Don’t From Clock:
Hearing Lennon in this unpolished state—strumming, singing, sometimes distracted—offers a rare intimacy. It’s Lennon as he might have sounded to Yoko on an ordinary afternoon, not the Lennon filtered through Abbey Road studios and polished production.
Clock also reflects the creative interplay between John and Yoko during this fertile period. Ono was preparing for her upcoming exhibition at the Everson Museum, and Lennon was fully immersed in both music and filmmaking. Together, they blurred the lines between art, music, and daily life. For Lennon, filming a clock for an hour was as legitimate an artistic pursuit as writing a hit single.
While Imagine became one of the most iconic visual documents of Lennon’s career, Clock slipped quietly into obscurity. It was never meant for mass audiences, never released commercially in its time, and largely forgotten outside of hardcore Lennon collectors. Its inclusion in Power To The People reintroduces it as an essential artifact for understanding Lennon not just as a songwriter, but as a restless experimenter.
Perhaps what makes Clock so compelling now is its ordinariness. We see Lennon horsing around, chatting with Yoko, taking phone calls, strumming his guitar. The film captures him as a man in motion, less than a decade removed from Beatlemania, in the midst of redefining himself as a solo artist and political activist.
The estate’s decision to premiere the Honey Don’t performance alongside the Clock footage underscores this duality: Lennon as both rock’n’roll lifer and avant-garde filmmaker. It’s a reminder that he never stopped searching for new modes of expression, whether through a three-minute pop song or a one-hour experimental timepiece.
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