By ALLAN KOZINN

In February, 1972, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Elephant’s Memory -- a downtown band with good connections in the antiwar movement -- set up at the Record Plant to begin recording the overtly political “Some Time in New York City” album. The sessions lasted just over a month: Lennon’s idea, at that time, was that recordings should be a form of journalism -- that once he had an idea, he should pop into the studio, record it quickly and with few production flourishes, and get it out.

It was also a fraught time for the Lennons. The FBI had been following them for months, and had informed the Nixon administration that they had been participating in antiwar demonstrations, were spending time with radicals like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and were planning (however vaguely) a tour with an antiwar message. About a week before the sessions began, the government began proceedings to try to have Lennon deported, on the pretext of a 1968 drug conviction in England.

Just before the sessions began, Mike Jahn — then a pop music reviewer for The New York Times (and the first to hold that position), now a novelist and blogger — wrangled an invitation to attend one of the early sessions. (He believes the date was Feb. 22.)

“One of the Elephant’s Memory guys — the drummer, I think — called and said that Lennon was doing his first recording work in this country and did I want to drop in,” Mr. Jahn said in an email. “I had reviewed one of their shows and we shared antiwar politics . I was more political than most of the counterculture reporters of the time, and probably knew a lot of the same people. I presume from what he said that the sessions had already begun. Although there was a lot of getting-acquainted going on in that studio. It just may be that this was the first day. No tracks were laid down while I was there (an hour or two).”

At the studio, Mr. Jahn interviewed Lennon for a short column that did not appear in the paper but was syndicated by Times Special Features. He also shot a roll of film. One picture ran with his column; another was published in the rock magazine Creem. The rest have never been seen, until now. They show Lennon talking with members of Elephant’s Memory, and several shots catch him rehearsing, with the group’s bassist, Gary Van Seyoc, just behind him.

After Mr. Jahn’s column was published, Lennon thought better about having granted the interview and allowing the photographs. He was in the United States, after all, on a visitor’s visa, and was not legally allowed to work — as the photos clearly show him doing. “Lennon freaked out and accused me of playing into the hands of the C.I.A.,” Mr. Jahn said. His own theory, though is that Lennon was upset with him because “after talking to him and taking pictures I went back to the control room and flirted shamelessly with Yoko. I was smitten with her. What do you expect, she was a New York artist. My crowd. She was also very cute and absolutely magnetic. I had the same reaction to her that John did.”

Mr. Jahn is currently working on a memoir. We offer the photos as a commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Lennon’s murder outside the Dakota, on Dec. 8, 1980.