Shaved Fish

Superimposed on a background consisting mostly of a cloudy, pale blue sky is a three-row by four-column borderless grid. Eleven of the 12 blocks in the grid contain the title from one of the songs on the album and an illustration for that song. The 12th block, located in the first row, third column, has a white background. Starting from the top, the words "SHAVED FISH LENNON" are vertically aligned, appearing in large black block capitals with a red dot centred in a separate row between "FISH" and "LENNON"; below "LENNON", in a single row of smaller block capitals, are the words "PLASTIC ONO BAND".

Compilation album by John Lennon

Released

20 October 1975 (US)
24 October 1975 (UK)

Recorded

June 1969–July 1974

Genre

Rock

Length

41:55

Label

Apple

Producer

John Lennon, Yoko Ono,
Phil Spector

John Lennon chronology

Rock 'n' Roll
(1975)

Shaved Fish
(1975)

Double Fantasy
(1980)

Singles from Shaved Fish

"Imagine"
Released: 24 October 1975 (UK)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Robert Christgau	B+
MusicHound	3/5
The Rolling Stone Album Guide

Shaved Fish is a compilation album by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band, released in October 1975 on Apple Records. It contains all of the singles that he had issued up to that point in the United States as a solo artist, with the exception of "Stand by Me", which had been released earlier that year. The only compilation of his non-Beatles recordings released during his lifetime, it peaked at number 8 in the UK and number 12 in the US. It was also Lennon's final release on Apple Records.

The compilation includes many of Lennon's most popular solo recordings, five of which had not yet appeared on an album: "Cold Turkey", "Instant Karma!", "Power to the People", the holiday single "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" and "Give Peace a Chance". The latter appeared in truncated form, split to begin side one and end side two. Eight of these singles made the Top 40 on the Billboard chart, with "Whatever Gets You thru the Night" going to number 1; five made the top ten in the United Kingdom. "Imagine", never previously released as a single in the UK, was issued as such concurrent to the release of this album. Several of the master tapes were unavailable for the compilation, and dubs were used, some with shorter fadeouts. A later compact disc issue used the original masters, restoring the full fadeouts of these songs.

Its release came less than three weeks after the resolution of Lennon's long-running immigration dispute and the birth of Sean Lennon. The name of the album originates from the Japanese food katsuobushi, a kind of dried fish.

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Wikipedia