Неоконченная музыка №2: Жизнь со львами

Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions is the second of three experimental albums of avant garde music by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, released in May 1969 on Zapple, a sub label of Apple. It was a successor to 1968's highly controversial Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, and was followed by the Wedding Album. The album peaked in the United States at number 174, 50 places lower than the previous album. The album, whose title is a play on words of the BBC Radio show Life with The Lyons, was recorded at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London and live at Cambridge University, in November 1968 and March 1969, respectively. The Cambridge performance, to which Ono had been invited and to which she brought Lennon, was Lennon and Ono's second as a couple. A few of the album's tracks were previewed by the public, thanks to Aspen magazine. The album was remastered in 1997.

Beatle John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Unfinished Music" series was an attempt by Lennon and Ono to make a record of their life together. With Ono's Grapefruit in mind, Lennon and Ono imagined that the sound wasn't printed into the vinyl's grooves, but was meant to be thought of by the listener's mind. Lennon described "Unfinished Music" as "saying whatever you want it to say. It is just us expressing ourselves like a child does, you know, however he feels like then. What we're saying is make your own music. This is Unfinished Music." The record, which featured mostly Ono on the first side, with Lennon contributing the whole second side as one track, edited by Mario Amaya,#tag:ref|All by Ono, except where noted. Side one: "Song for John"/"Let's Go on Flying"/"Snow Is Falling All the Time", "Mum's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow", "No Bed for Beatle John" (Ono and Lennon). Side two: "Radio Play" (Lennon). Before Lennon and Ono were together as a couple, Ono was asked to perform at a free jazz concert in Lady Mitchell Hall at Cambridge University, Saxophonist John Tchicai and percussionist John Stevens join Ono and Lennon near the end of the piece. Throughout the performance, Lennon kept his back to the audience. Recalled Tchicai, Lennon and Ono said to the players: "If you would like to join us for some improvisation, please do." including reports of the hospital not giving Lennon a bed to stay in during Ono's miscarriage, and EMI refusing to carry Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins because of its controversial sleeve, in a cappella chant style. The album closes with "Radio Play", which includes sounds of a radio with brief moments of Lennon and Ono having a conversation and Lennon making a phone call in the background.

Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions was released on 9 May 1969 in the UK
Contemporaneously, Ed Ward wrote in Rolling Stone that the album was "utter bullshit" and "in poor taste". Alan Jones of Lincolnshire Echo warned that the album ranged "from Yoko singing their press cuttings in a high cat like voice to John twiddling the dial on the radio", and did not advise the record for those "on small record buying budgets." The Sault Star were more favourable, deeming its contents and artwork to "sum up the total of rock as a revolutionary force." In a review for Cambridge Evening News, Douglas Oliver said the Cambridge concert was "strange and chilling. Not in a bad sense, but because there was so much unusual texture. At no time did the music become comforting. It was an extraordinary experience." In a retrospective review, AllMusic's William Ruhlmann wrote of Lennon and Ono: "If, as they suggested, their lives were their art, then this is, too. Maybe." Tom Carson of Entertainment Weekly described the album as a "notoriously oblique" sound collage. Martin C. Strong of The Great Rock Discography said the album continued Lennon and Ono's "anti commercial, free form direction, the songs mainly recorded on a small cassette player." while in The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Colin Larkin said the album saw Lennon continue "his marvellous joke on us".

Chart (1969)PeakpositionTotalweeksU. S. Billboard 2001748