One of rock history’s most significant live recordings is coming to cinema screens worldwide. Trafalgar Releasing and Mercury Studios announce ‘Power To The People: John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band with Elephant’s Memory and Special Guests, Live at the One To One Concert, New York City, 1972’, screening April 29 and May 3. Tickets go on sale Friday, March 20, coinciding with John and Yoko’s 57th wedding anniversary, at powertothepeoplefilm.com.
These were the only full-length concerts John Lennon performed after leaving The Beatles. The two sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden on August 30, 1972 drew a combined audience of 40,000 people and raised over $1.5 million for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the equivalent of $11.5 million today. “That Madison Square Garden gig was the best music I enjoyed playing since The Cavern or even Hamburg,” Lennon told NME in 1972.
The film is a restoration twenty years in the making. Every frame has been physically and digitally cleaned by hand, with the entire project newly re-edited and remixed by a seven-time GRAMMY Award-winning team led by Sean Ono Lennon. The audio multitracks were baked, re-transferred at high resolution, and remixed in HD 192/24 Stereo, 5.1 Surround, and Dolby Atmos, available at select locations.
The setlist is extraordinary. Lennon performs “New York City,” “Instant Karma,” “Imagine,” and “Mother.” Yoko Ono delivers “Don’t Worry Kyoko” and “Open Your Box.” The night includes rousing renditions of “Come Together” and “Hound Dog,” closing with “Give Peace a Chance” alongside special guests Stevie Wonder, Sha Na Na, and Melanie Safka-Schekeryk.
For Sean Ono Lennon, the project carries profound personal weight. “It was a concert that had a legendary status in my mind, because it was my dad’s last concert,” he says. “All we’ve got is this concert. And I think it is very beautiful because it is so unlike what people were doing at the time. My dad was already kind of pre-empting the arrival of punk. He just wanted to go back to basics and be raw and spontaneous and rock ‘n’ roll.”
The film serves as the definitive companion to the ‘Power To The People’ 12-disc box set released on October 10, 2025, and follows the 2025 documentary ‘One To One: John & Yoko’, which documented the rehearsals and preparation for these historic shows. Directed by Simon Hilton, edited by Ben Wainwright-Pearce, and produced by Peter Worsley and Sean Ono Lennon, the film is built as a multiscreen experience from the ground up.
“The One To One concert was our effort in Grassroots Politics,” Yoko Ono Lennon wrote. “It embodied what John and I strongly believed in, Rock for Peace and Enlightenment. And this one in Madison Square Garden turned out to be the last concert John and I did together. Imagine Peace. Peace is Power. Power To The People.”
