JOHN LENNON – “Imagine”
“John Lennon’s life was no longer a debate” – in a song which has a good claim to be the stupidest lyric ever recorded, this is a glimpse of insight. Lennon’s murder didn’t turn him into an icon – he was one anyway – but it froze his iconicity into a certain pattern: troubled genius, artist, lover and man of peace. The perfect demonstration of this was the release of Albert Goldman’s Lennon biography, which aroused raving outrage simply by detailing the numerous ways in which Lennon was a perfectly typical 60s and 70s rock star. There was more to him than that, but there’s more to him than “Imagine” too.
Not that you’d know it sometimes. In yesterday’s Guardian Yoko Ono delighted us with some ‘celebrity wrapping paper’ – a sheet of newspaper on which she’d had printed the words “IMAGINE PEACE”, translated into the languages of many nations. What it instantly reminded me of were the ads produced by big global companies – like BA and McDonalds – in which their taglines appear in a similar polyglot style. It helped make concrete what Lennon has become, if not the walking foaming debate he’d sometimes been when alive: a brand. Ono’s directive Fluxus pieces still seem sharp and ahead of their time because they’ve come to look like a prior response to the aphoristic emptiness of the business advice and self-help industries: most of the stuff in Grapefruit would fit nicely on Twitter. But as the wrap demonstrates, she’s since met those trends more than halfway. And what are the Lennon Brand’s values, its products, its mission statement? “Imagine Peace”. “Imagine”. Peace. (The former has generally been a bigger seller than the latter).
Lennon hasn’t had it all his own way critically: I am hardly the first writer to dislike “Imagine”. In fact the laurels on the comment thread are likely to go to anyone who can make a really good case for its beauty, wisdom or excellence. But in general – to Sir Macca’s increasingly public dudgeon – he’s been ensconced as the Beatle Who Mattered; the artist, the poet, the rocker, the experimenter. And the public popularity of this song at least is truly unshakable – in any poll of the top number ones, or the top songs ever, there it is.
“Imagine” is a Fluxus piece for primary schools – “it’s easy if you try” says Teacher John, as if he’s telling us how to make a potato print. Presumably its profundity and simplicity are a big reason for its popularity, but there’s a My First Koan feel to the lyrics and performance which turns these qualities into dodges: if you think too hard about the words you’re not doing it right. And in a way it does feel cheap to pick “Imagine” apart, as despite all appearances I’m not sure it’s meant as a philosophical statement – though again, since December 1980, that’s what it’s become.
So what is good about it? It’s instantly memorable and sincerely performed, and if you’re charitable you can see slyness in a song that begins “Imagine there’s no heaven” but is so obviously trying for hymnal qualities. But that doesn’t get past how grimly tedious it is to listen to, or excuse the infuriating sanctimony in Lennon’s voice when he sings “I wonder if you can”. That line’s a tell if ever I heard one: Lennon can’t quite shake off his competitive streak, his acerbic edge. The song isn’t a program, it’s a fantasy of all Lennon’s personal sources of conflict – religion, money, national borders – being magically removed. It is – and sounds – a really supine, passive song: peace is a function of obstacles being waved away, making the singer a better person.
In 1971 it shared album space with the vastly more entertaining intra-Beatle bitchfest “How Do You Sleep?”, a sign that Lennon was either a colossal hypocrite or that he was well aware that “Imagine” was one dream-version of his cantankerous self. On that record it’s still not good, but it is what it is – another facet or mood of its writer. Taken to represent the whole of him, it’s a fraud. Taken to represent the whole of Pop – well, you might as well list the Top 100 Jokes Of All Time and put “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” at the summit.
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Some of us like the fact that he was the only one who put himself out there without being afraid of being held up to ridicule.
The only one of who? The Beatles? Pop stars in general?
I’ve barely seen any photos or video footage of Yoko Ono without her shades on – except for the ‘Imagine’ video. Her glazed-over inane expression while her and John are sat at the piano drives me up the wall way more than the song does. Their big white piano, in their big white house. It is WHITE which is the colour of PEACE do you SEE. Just look at her smug face in the last 30 seconds – she can’t quite believe her bloody luck.
Add that to the fact that I’ve never liked Lennon’s voice on any track when it’s been put through that echo filter thing, and the result is cringeworthy at best.
Funny how favouring Paul has become the hip thing to do – how times have changed!
If the Beatles’ solo work demonstrates anything it’s the importance of group chemistry, alone they were all pretty so-so, often pleasant but generally unremarkable, together they were without peer (it goes without saying that the Beach Boys were better, but even they didn’t have the same thrusting dynamism of golden period (63-67) Fabs).
The lyrics to Imagine are essentially greetings card tosh, but I’ve always enjoyed the soothing hymnal quality of those rolling piano chords and Lennon’s thin, quavering voice. I’d like to think it’s the sound of a troubled man who’s done much wrong to those around him reaching inside himself for something greater and more noble, rather than cynically peddling featherweight hippy tosh to his fans, but I don’t think it really matters. For better or worse most people seem to have made up their minds about this. It’s not Lennon’s best song (not even among his solo catalogue) but it’s far from his worst – there are some real stinkers…
And PS, when did we start getting off knocking pop stars for hypocrisy, narcissism, being a bit of a shit etc? I’d rather have a gradiose, arrogant posturing prick like Lennon than someone like Macca presenting himself as a humble man of the people sort, which is just as phoney and a lot more boring!
Strip all the phoneys, the thugs, the poseurs, the druggies, the cheats and the lunatics out of pop and you’re left with Coldplay – surely no-one wants that?
Woah there – disliking “Imagine”, whether it’s because you think the lyrics smug, hypocritical or plain trite (I don’t – I’m with Erithian, 15, on that one), or the music dull and plodding(I do – for reasons I posted in 10), is not an act of iconoclasm. Jesus. I’m not after cool points.
This is a dull piece of music that, for me, has the added on annoyance value of having inspired so many fourth rate rock stars who picked up on Lennon’s arrogance, but forgot the talent and humour (not that Lennon was particularly funny, and actually I’ve always found Gallagher Senior a very amusing interview – he talks a good album any rate).
Point is, this is not scared cow bashing for the sake of it. No doubt the vehemence of some of the criticism stems from the record’s hugely overplayed and venerated status – we are hardly likely to be a having a heated debate about some long lost b-side or obscure album out-take.
Of course, it’s not the very worst song Lennon has ever written. It is however the very worst of those that have achieved any significant level of popularity.
And as for ridicule???? Ridicule is nothing to be scared of
Elton John went round to Lennon’s gaf in New York once and took the piss, which I thought was blinding. Referring to the bit in Imagine which goes “imagine no possessions”, Elton, on seeing the apartment, which was the size of a block of flats in it’s own right, started singing
“Imagine six apartments
It isn’t hard to do
One is full of fur coats
The other’s full of shoes”
Lennon went all defensive
“It’s only a bloody song!”
Says it all. Working class hero? Not on your nelly!
28 – Is liking McCartney hip now? I’ve always been a big fan, partly because I am a bass player and producer and have been frequently left gobsmacked by McCartney’s playing and writing.
And partly because I read “Revolution In The Head” a few years ago and was fascinated at just how much McCartney contributed to the experimental, envelope-pushing side of the Beatles.
I know Wings/70s McCartney has acquired a sort of kitsch/GP style following. But, Wings were pretty ropey. The McCartney output is very inconsistent post-Beatles but every so often you get a “Maybe I’m Amazed” or “Temporary Secretary” and you think, blimey, he’s pulled another rabbit out of the hat.
You get loads of broadsheet pricks like Miranda Sawyer saying things like ‘of course, Paul was the talented one in The Beatles…’
Tommy – 28 I like your interpretation of the lyric. I don’t think Lennon lacked self-awareness, and I think there must have been an element at least of wanting redemption in writing this.
it’s not an echofilter thingy, kat: spector liked getting lennon to double-track, ie sing in unison with himself
i think there was quite a big difference between the effect of this song when recorded — when it was a pretty big fvck-you to a lot of people he’d recently been onside with (political radicals beginning to embrace violence as the only possible solution)* — and its penumbra ten years later, with him just dead and being sanctified, and this taken, not as one snapshot contrarian comment among many (cf, as tom notes, “how do you sleep?”), but the definitive stand-in for the totality of his belief system
he was pretty good at not letting himself be sanctified while alive, he’d say and do things that made it very hard (i half-recall a story of him and harry nilsson getting bladdered in LA bars, lennon with a used tampon taped to his forehead hurrah, no, wait); and i am actually fairly forgiving of his new york radical activist phase, even though the music was often (not always) awful, because it’s not as though any political grown-ups round him were (radical or centrist or reactionary) were engaged in heroic achievement — the late 60s and early 70s were a horrible and a stupid time all round
*he went constantly backwards and forwards on this kind of issue — he wasn’t a political naif the way a lot of popstars are — but he was extremely argumentative and disliked feeling he was being pushed around or manoeuvred into a corner; the downside of this is the worst of bono-geldof i think; but (even so) i am still (personally) very far from being inclined to say, ok, leave the political stage to the professional politicians; as i said before, i think the problem for lennon was the problem of perspective on his own power-to-affect-the-world, the scale of it and the nature of it — his situation was unprecedented, and i don’t see why he should simply have placed himself in purdah forever (he did end up doing just this: retiring from the fray; but it was chapman that made it permanent, not lennon-ono)
I’d like to think he wasn’t exempting himself from the ‘I wonder if you can’ anyway…
tommy are you arguing that coldplay aren’t phoneys?! that’s fighting talk!
Yeah, I can see why people would end up hating the saintly image that’s been painted of him since his death (Stuff like that mobile phone ad with Chris Evans where they’ve doctored footage of Lennon standing in front of a tank in Tiannamen Square…)
They’re the worst kind of phoney – the sort of phoney who says ‘I’m just being myself…’
My point was that if you nix anyone with the chutzpah to record a grand, overarching, over-reaching statement like imagine then all you’re left with is mordant navel-gazing like ballache Martin and his pals
The first “name” I can remember going public with Paul-love was Paddy MacAloon in an NME interview. At the time it was startling enough for a hip indie kid to declare a preference for Macca over Lennon for the NME to put it in the intro deck after the headline.
Naturally, everone in pop is a phoney of some sort and that’s a good thing. It’s a grand dressing up box that’s far more important and profound than it will ever know.
actually i’d be prepared to bet (a very very tiny amount) that elvis costello made pro-macca intervention at some earlier point; partly bcz he too is a pop craftsman; partly bcz he likes starting arguments and being difficult
the korrekt position is: all the beatles were of exactly equal importance and so are you
I can’t see any need for the strength of negative comment this particular track has attracted.
What many posters don’t seem to acknowledge, although they will be aware of it, is that the song was (in the UK anyway) originally just an album track from 1971. Seen as an artifact of its time, it does not seem so banal; there were all sorts of twee, simplistic “peace songs” around at the time, mostly written/performed by acts who could not lace Lennon’s bootlaces. In that context, “Imagine” was critically lauded as a refreshing and admirable statement or aspiration.
I have always found it to be a rather sweet, innocent song. Yes it’s naive, but it’s rather disingenuous to extend that description to Lennon himself. I’ve always considered that Lennon meant it sincerely, while fully understanding and accepting that it was likely to be ridiculed and lampooned for that very reason.
We were all a decade older and already familiar with the song by the time it made #1; perhaps we were more cynical; perhaps it just didn’t fit the times any more… and we’re another 27 years older now – it’s a lot easier to be sneering and knowing from a position of hindsight (and disconnectedness).
It’s not the greatest Lennon song, and it’s not one of the best songs of all time, and possibly its ubiquity has rather negated its message, but I believe it is a fine song 6.
Just a quick moment to pause and enjoy the Olympic standard vitriol and dissing on this comments page – Imagine is a deserving target, as are many of the others, and it’s a genuine pleasure to watch such carefully honed edges employed for their intended purposes!
1974, Year 9 class in high school – my best friend declared that this song was nothing more than a communist manifesto. The teacher, amused, had the whole class write an essay on whether this was indeed so.
(That same friend now practises law at The Hague)
Let’s be fair. One week in the top 5 in 1975 is how good this record really is.
Re: 44 – The whole point is that we are not discussing this as a John Lennon album track in the context of 1971 – Tom’s project is British number ones and therefore the Imagine on the table is a posthumous number one and secular hymn in the making. It’s past life is worth noting, but it’s the monster in the making that we’ve got here. The obvious current comparison is Hallelujah – every death or break-up scene scored to Jeff Buckley/John Cale/other similar version takes it further and further away from what it once may have been…
Re 46: Wow: that would have sent only Karl mad, almost as much as people describing themselves as ‘utopian Marxists’ (“Fred, how times do we have to tell this bastards that we hate sodding dreamers – we’re scientists.”)
Re 14: Yes, but Clem never said “Imagine you no longer have to worry about paying the doctor”, he just did it.
48, but we’re not talking about it in the context of 1980/81 either – I think it’s accepted that it was only #1 because of Lennon’s tragic death.
However, if we are to limit our discussion to current thinking, and disregard its history, and its impact in its time(s), we miss much of the point of the exercise.
While today you might find the public rather split down the middle on this track, in either 1971 or 1980 you would probably have had a 90-10 split (I would imagine most posters here hadn’t even turned against it by then).
I do think rather a lot of the vitriol being heaped on this is for effect and show – “Look at me, I’m dissing John Lennon”.
I think we’ve agreed it’s not the best song ever, not even one of the best in Lennon’s canon, and I can understand why people don’t like it, but it doesn’t deserve the slagging it’s getting here.
Still a solid 6.