Lennon: “The record company didn’t even want to put that out either. I put that together because I realised that some of the singles like Cold Turkey, which was never a big hit record, the record company would lose the tape, you know, the record would be wiped off the face of the earth by disinterest. So I put Shaved Fish together of all the singles because if I didn’t do it nobody else would and that was just for my own personal history and for anybody else who cared to buy the record. It wasn’t an effort really. Just to conserve my work because in 40 years I want to look back on it and be able to find it. You know, because Cold Turkey isn’t a big, big, big hit the record company will probably lose the tape.”

“They wouldn’t even know where the fucking tape was if you asked them for it now. I had a real trouble finding the tapes to Give Peace a Chance and Cold Turkey and Woman is the Nigger because they weren’t big hits. They were known but they didn’t sell millions of records. I couldn’t even sing Woman is the Nigger, I was on Dick Cavett. They wouldn’t let me say the word Nigger. Right. There was a big controversy about Woman is the Nigger. The stations wouldn’t play it. The people were disgusted and I mean this is only 1971, right.”

Transcript excerpt from John & Yoko’s 1980 Interviews with Playboy Magazine