Watch Teaser of Never-Before-Seen Film 'Clock' By John Lennon

09-10-2025

(UMe) On September 10, 1971, John Lennon & Yoko Ono were staying at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City. They were busy filming and editing "Imagine" - their groundbreaking longform music film to accompany the Imagine album. Before they went out to film the beach scenes that day at South Beach, Staten Island, they created two films, "Freedom" and "Clock."

"Freedom" was Yoko's idea - a mid-shot of a woman struggling to escape her bra. "Clock" was John's idea, filming a carriage clock for an hour, with John & Yoko in the room, in the mirror. The concept was that different actions could happen at different times in the hour, and the film could then act as an hourly clock.

John performed twenty songs in the hour they filmed "Clock" and this intimate, fly-on-the-wall performance of "Honey Don't" by Carl Perkins is the first-ever glimpse into this little known about film.

The soundtrack of the film, including "Honey Don't," is featured in the forthcoming box set Power To The People, which chronicles John & Yoko's early years in NYC and their political activism.

John's Dialog From The Original Film: Just relax, you know, you don't have to be in or out of the picture. Just do whatever you have to do, OK? It's gonna be a clock, you know, so it's not like a proper movie. It'll just be like a background. We're gonna be one hour doing this. On the quarter past, you should walk through and then they know it's quarter past, you know what I mean? Whenever there's a quarter of an hour, somebody should do something specific, right, so people get to know it by the picture of what's going on... Must be getting near half past, John walked out of the picture again. At exactly twenty-to, he lit her cigarette. At 3'35', Karen called. At quarter-to, he broke the lights! [laughs] At the hour we should just go completely barmy or something. On the hour, we'll just run out hysterically, OK? Directly on twelve, we'll run right out the room. On the count of three, we'll just get up and run out. One, two, three.