Lennon's Imagine: It was 40 years ago today
John Lennon's album Imagine was released on September 9, 1971. At the time it was instantly recognized as a classic, it's gone down in people's memory as one of the greatest albums of all time, and its impact on world culture has been extensive. The title song has practically become an international anthem that expresses the world's longing for a better world distilled into its most concentrated, direct expression, and is still being sung around the world by groups of idealist people holding hands. According to Jimmy Carter, "In many countries around the world-my wife and I have visited about 125 countries-you hear John Lennon's song 'Imagine' used almost equally with national anthems." By Yoko Ono's authorization, Amnesty International adopted "Imagine" as their official song.
Let me look back at the album song by song...
Imagine
Pretty much everything that could be said about this song has been said over and over for forty years. On its 40th anniversary I think it's appropriate to look back to how it would have sounded on first hearing to the world of 1971.
For me personally, 1971 was the last semi-OK year I had before my life went all to hell. In September 1971 I turned 12 and started seventh grade, which is when I began drinking wine, drinking coffee (my parents were fine with pouring wine for me but very resistant to my starting on coffee), studying the Italian language, and teaching myself Italian cooking. I was making rapid progress in classical piano lessons and building a solid classical music record collection. It was a time when my intellect and soul were taking advantage of room to grow, and my sense of self was still reasonably intact. I made the most of the cultural opportunities that the level of privilege I was raised in had to offer, within the limits imposed by my young age and strict Catholic upbringing. I was not hip to rock at that age, unfortunately, and only learned to appreciate Lennon's music a few years later.
In 1971: Genesis did Nursery Cryme, the Who did Who's Next, Yes did "I've Seen All Good People" ("send an instant karma to me..."), the Stones did Sticky Fingers. Louis Armstrong and Jim Morrison did death. Zeppelin did "Stairway to Heaven." I was not oblivious to Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World," which was all over the radio. My father played that song over and over, bought the sheet music to it, and performed it with his own band. Jeremiah was a good friend of his too.
1971 was the year that '60s radicalism simmered down from a rolling boil to barely registering. Opposition to the Vietnam War continued, but the New Left radicalism that had culminated in Angela Davis, the Black Panthers, the SDS, and the Weathermen seemed to run out of gas and just stop. Tricky Dick, whom Lennon protested and mocked in his music, was nearing the peak of his power and influence, which was bad news for the left. Nixon continued to make war on Vietnam while ignoring the antiwar movement. Also 40 years ago today, the prisoners took over Attica State and then got massacred. Pakistan's idealism was shattered too as Bangladesh broke away amid enormous, horrific genocide. The chances of youthful idealists to change the world began rapidly fading away. The sole exception was George Harrison's Concert for Bangla Desh, the swan song of the great Sixties countercultural events, in August 1971. Women abandoned mini and maxi skirts and went for "hot pants." More importantly, the women of Switzerland finally got the vote (What the hell took them so long?). Also, 1971 saw the launch of Ms. magazine!
What was a '60s radical who was still full of energy to do? If your name is John Lennon, you take all that is being lost from the world around you and distill it into a song that will have wide popular appeal, making a time capsule to carry that spirit through the ages, so that generations to come will be able to know of it. A way to put time in a bottle and give peace a chance into the future, for a day when it be able to blossom again.
Lennon had closed his previous album by announcing "The dream is over." The next thing you know, he directly contradicts what he'd just said and comes out as a dreamer. You have to remember, the Seventies was a time given to personal transformation, of which Lennon set a famous example with his own life. So sharp contradictions between different stages of one's journey are not to be feared. To renounce the dream frees you up to reclaim it and restate it in a new way.
The home video that Lennon & Ono made for "Imagine" was brilliant in its simplicity: the white piano in the white room, where she wore a white ancient Egyptian-style gown and went around opening all the windows and letting light in. The imagery was perfect for the song.
Crippled Inside
Lennon hated it when McCartney made the Beatles play corny old-fashioned style songs. McCartney was doing it to be cute. Here Lennon uses that style of music in a satire of cuteness, with strong lyrics that puncture and demolish the pretentious façades of people who are crippled inside. The cheesy good-time music makes an ironic counterpoint to people's psychological shipwrecks. It's like a skeleton in a clown suit. It takes a Lennon to pull off this level of Biercean satire.
Jealous Guy
Lennon went through a long, tortuous progression from one of the ugliest misogynists in rock to become its most outstanding male feminist ever. In "Run for Your Life" (1965) he literally threatened to kill his woman if she was caught with another man. I feel sick and dirty just to recall that damn song. "Getting Better" (1967) represented his beginning attempt to repent and correct his ways. Then, learning from Ono, he "talked of women's liberation" in "Well Well Well" (1970).
"Jealous Guy" represents the middle of his feminist development and does further work on his repentance for how abusive he'd been toward women in the past. Although in these lyrics he sort of tries to make excuses, he does issue a straightforward apology and admits to wrongdoing. Next, with "Woman Is the Nigger of the World" (1972), he made a strikingly bold proclamation for feminism that still sounds radical today. And when Ono exclaimed "Male chauvinist pig engineer!" before beginning her song "Sisters, O Sisters," Lennon chimed in with "Right on, sister!" Finally, at the end of his life, he left the great song "Woman" (1980) as a final legacy of his feminist awakening.
Notice how the melody and the piano accompaniment of "Jealous Guy" are reminiscent of "A Day in the Life."
It's So Hard
When it comes to the blues, dirty blues, there is no such thing as too dirty.
I Don't Want to Be a Soldier
This song sounds like Lennon had been listening to the swampy trance blues of Dr. John the Night Tripper, and then filled it out with a heavy-duty "wall of sound." It starts out sounding like an antiwar protest song, but the lyrics dissolve into surreal wordplay as the reverbing music attempts to dissolve your mind. Typically of Lennon, a sharp edge of sarcasm persists through the surreal haze. Lennon plays acoustic rhythm guitar on this song; when acoustic guitar is buried in a dense hard rock mix, all you can hear of it is rhythmic clicking of the pick hitting the strings, not the actual chords played. The only way to end a song like this is to dissolve into sonic chaos. The brief electronic coda is like a signature, as if to say, From the people who brought you "Revolution 9."
Gimme Some Truth
Admit it, at times we all feel like delivering a really cranky, pissed-off rant at the world just like this one. Artistically, it's a risky move because it's too easy for the artist to wind up sounding just cranky and self-indulgent. But emotionally, who hasn't wanted to get something like this off their chest once in a while? Especially when Tricky Dick has been frustrating the progress of everything good that you believe in? George Harrison's guitar solo kicks the ass of this song nice and hard.
Oh My Love
This has always been my favorite song on the album. It has been pretty much overlooked by everyone. It's gentle and quiet with a dreamy, mystical atmosphere that appeals to my Neptune rising. In a way, this song is the last blossom to bloom of Sixties psychedelic music. But "the flower that blooms late will be the most beautiful of all." The piano duo arrangement featuring Nicky Hopkins is outstanding, lending the perfect touch for this fragile, lovely song.
How Do You Sleep?
Here's the song that all the rock critics like the best. What they like is for rock to be hard, nasty, offensive, to display a really mean mean streak. I'm not much of a fan of McCartney's music, but come on. McCartney never did anything to deserve such a cruel attack. This song is a big WTF for me. Its success at being mean seems to be all that matters to the rock critics, its complete lack of moral justification aside. Ben Gerson's review in Rolling Stone struggles to understand what Lennon was attempting to do here:...the audacity of the refrain "Ah how do you sleep at night?" as if to suggest that Paul's conscience should be bothered by the course his life has taken.
The motives for "Sleep" are baffling. Partly it is the traditional bohemian contempt for the bourgeois; partly it is the souring of John's long-standing competitive relationship with Paul. When they were both Beatles their rivalry was channeled towards the betterment of the Beatles as a totality. Apart, it is only destructive.
Most insidiously, I fear that John sees himself in the role of truth-teller, and, as such, can justify any kind of self-indulgent brutality in the name of truth.
J.Hy says: The line "you live with straights" is not referring to heterosexuals. Back then, "straight" was slang for square, not cool, essentially anyone who didn't smoke pot or like rock 'n' roll. The line "jump when your momma tell you anything" can either be misogyny rearing its ugly head for one more go, or else an attempt to infantilize McCartney as a child, depending on how the word momma is interpreted. In purely musical terms, the song is Lennon at his most effective, Harrison contributes another badass guitar solo, and even the violins added on top of the rock music make a strong contribution to the sound. But that still doesn't excuse the cruelty of the lyrics for me.
How?
The lyrics are a faithful account of a turning point or crisis in the progress of one's psychological development, but it's risky to go there without slipping into self-indulgence. The music of this song never gels and isn't strong enough to support the challenging lyrics. Also, the sound is overproduced, as though trying to compensate for the musical weakness. Shifting time signatures can be tricky to handle; done well, they can propel a song's rhythmic verve. Here, though, the metrical shifts just make it drag. The way "How?" immediately follows "How Do You Sleep?" in the track listing diminishes its impact by making it look like a fading echo of the previous song.
Oh Yoko!
The Imagine album worked its way through some heavy material. This song, with its bouncy rhythm and sunny major key, was well-placed at the end, to leave the listeners with some nice cheery warmth. The music is so naïve and innocent, it would be well suited to a Saturday morning show for children, were it not for the subtle eroticism in the lyrics.
Yoko Ono is an accomplished artist and a notable feminist. She turned Lennon into the most outspoken male feminist of all time. She's gotten a bum rap from the haters who unjustly blame her for destroying the Beatles. Truth is, the Beatles destroyed themselves all on their own. It was not Ono's fault at all. The hate directed against her is for being an independent, strong woman of color who crashed the all-white boys' club. She became a lightning rod for the ugly underside of racism and misogyny in the rock world, where Asians don't count and women are expected to be mute and subservient. It's long past due for Ono's reputation to be rehabilitated and for her to get the recognition and appreciation she's earned. This song refutes the haters, who would claim to be Lennon's fans while slagging off the woman he loved so passionately. This song is pure giddy love. Lennon's incredibly sloppy harmonica playing, sounding like a child's first attempt at the instrument, is tossed in to fit this carefree mood.
Imagine the clouds dripping.
Dig a hole in your garden
to put them in.
-Yoko Ono, 1964
Let me look back at the album song by song...
Imagine
Click to viewPretty much everything that could be said about this song has been said over and over for forty years. On its 40th anniversary I think it's appropriate to look back to how it would have sounded on first hearing to the world of 1971.
For me personally, 1971 was the last semi-OK year I had before my life went all to hell. In September 1971 I turned 12 and started seventh grade, which is when I began drinking wine, drinking coffee (my parents were fine with pouring wine for me but very resistant to my starting on coffee), studying the Italian language, and teaching myself Italian cooking. I was making rapid progress in classical piano lessons and building a solid classical music record collection. It was a time when my intellect and soul were taking advantage of room to grow, and my sense of self was still reasonably intact. I made the most of the cultural opportunities that the level of privilege I was raised in had to offer, within the limits imposed by my young age and strict Catholic upbringing. I was not hip to rock at that age, unfortunately, and only learned to appreciate Lennon's music a few years later.
In 1971: Genesis did Nursery Cryme, the Who did Who's Next, Yes did "I've Seen All Good People" ("send an instant karma to me..."), the Stones did Sticky Fingers. Louis Armstrong and Jim Morrison did death. Zeppelin did "Stairway to Heaven." I was not oblivious to Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World," which was all over the radio. My father played that song over and over, bought the sheet music to it, and performed it with his own band. Jeremiah was a good friend of his too.
1971 was the year that '60s radicalism simmered down from a rolling boil to barely registering. Opposition to the Vietnam War continued, but the New Left radicalism that had culminated in Angela Davis, the Black Panthers, the SDS, and the Weathermen seemed to run out of gas and just stop. Tricky Dick, whom Lennon protested and mocked in his music, was nearing the peak of his power and influence, which was bad news for the left. Nixon continued to make war on Vietnam while ignoring the antiwar movement. Also 40 years ago today, the prisoners took over Attica State and then got massacred. Pakistan's idealism was shattered too as Bangladesh broke away amid enormous, horrific genocide. The chances of youthful idealists to change the world began rapidly fading away. The sole exception was George Harrison's Concert for Bangla Desh, the swan song of the great Sixties countercultural events, in August 1971. Women abandoned mini and maxi skirts and went for "hot pants." More importantly, the women of Switzerland finally got the vote (What the hell took them so long?). Also, 1971 saw the launch of Ms. magazine!
What was a '60s radical who was still full of energy to do? If your name is John Lennon, you take all that is being lost from the world around you and distill it into a song that will have wide popular appeal, making a time capsule to carry that spirit through the ages, so that generations to come will be able to know of it. A way to put time in a bottle and give peace a chance into the future, for a day when it be able to blossom again.
Lennon had closed his previous album by announcing "The dream is over." The next thing you know, he directly contradicts what he'd just said and comes out as a dreamer. You have to remember, the Seventies was a time given to personal transformation, of which Lennon set a famous example with his own life. So sharp contradictions between different stages of one's journey are not to be feared. To renounce the dream frees you up to reclaim it and restate it in a new way.
The home video that Lennon & Ono made for "Imagine" was brilliant in its simplicity: the white piano in the white room, where she wore a white ancient Egyptian-style gown and went around opening all the windows and letting light in. The imagery was perfect for the song.
Crippled Inside
Lennon hated it when McCartney made the Beatles play corny old-fashioned style songs. McCartney was doing it to be cute. Here Lennon uses that style of music in a satire of cuteness, with strong lyrics that puncture and demolish the pretentious façades of people who are crippled inside. The cheesy good-time music makes an ironic counterpoint to people's psychological shipwrecks. It's like a skeleton in a clown suit. It takes a Lennon to pull off this level of Biercean satire.
Jealous Guy
Lennon went through a long, tortuous progression from one of the ugliest misogynists in rock to become its most outstanding male feminist ever. In "Run for Your Life" (1965) he literally threatened to kill his woman if she was caught with another man. I feel sick and dirty just to recall that damn song. "Getting Better" (1967) represented his beginning attempt to repent and correct his ways. Then, learning from Ono, he "talked of women's liberation" in "Well Well Well" (1970).
"Jealous Guy" represents the middle of his feminist development and does further work on his repentance for how abusive he'd been toward women in the past. Although in these lyrics he sort of tries to make excuses, he does issue a straightforward apology and admits to wrongdoing. Next, with "Woman Is the Nigger of the World" (1972), he made a strikingly bold proclamation for feminism that still sounds radical today. And when Ono exclaimed "Male chauvinist pig engineer!" before beginning her song "Sisters, O Sisters," Lennon chimed in with "Right on, sister!" Finally, at the end of his life, he left the great song "Woman" (1980) as a final legacy of his feminist awakening.
Notice how the melody and the piano accompaniment of "Jealous Guy" are reminiscent of "A Day in the Life."
It's So Hard
When it comes to the blues, dirty blues, there is no such thing as too dirty.
I Don't Want to Be a Soldier
This song sounds like Lennon had been listening to the swampy trance blues of Dr. John the Night Tripper, and then filled it out with a heavy-duty "wall of sound." It starts out sounding like an antiwar protest song, but the lyrics dissolve into surreal wordplay as the reverbing music attempts to dissolve your mind. Typically of Lennon, a sharp edge of sarcasm persists through the surreal haze. Lennon plays acoustic rhythm guitar on this song; when acoustic guitar is buried in a dense hard rock mix, all you can hear of it is rhythmic clicking of the pick hitting the strings, not the actual chords played. The only way to end a song like this is to dissolve into sonic chaos. The brief electronic coda is like a signature, as if to say, From the people who brought you "Revolution 9."
Gimme Some Truth
Admit it, at times we all feel like delivering a really cranky, pissed-off rant at the world just like this one. Artistically, it's a risky move because it's too easy for the artist to wind up sounding just cranky and self-indulgent. But emotionally, who hasn't wanted to get something like this off their chest once in a while? Especially when Tricky Dick has been frustrating the progress of everything good that you believe in? George Harrison's guitar solo kicks the ass of this song nice and hard.
Oh My Love
This has always been my favorite song on the album. It has been pretty much overlooked by everyone. It's gentle and quiet with a dreamy, mystical atmosphere that appeals to my Neptune rising. In a way, this song is the last blossom to bloom of Sixties psychedelic music. But "the flower that blooms late will be the most beautiful of all." The piano duo arrangement featuring Nicky Hopkins is outstanding, lending the perfect touch for this fragile, lovely song.
How Do You Sleep?
Here's the song that all the rock critics like the best. What they like is for rock to be hard, nasty, offensive, to display a really mean mean streak. I'm not much of a fan of McCartney's music, but come on. McCartney never did anything to deserve such a cruel attack. This song is a big WTF for me. Its success at being mean seems to be all that matters to the rock critics, its complete lack of moral justification aside. Ben Gerson's review in Rolling Stone struggles to understand what Lennon was attempting to do here:...the audacity of the refrain "Ah how do you sleep at night?" as if to suggest that Paul's conscience should be bothered by the course his life has taken.
The motives for "Sleep" are baffling. Partly it is the traditional bohemian contempt for the bourgeois; partly it is the souring of John's long-standing competitive relationship with Paul. When they were both Beatles their rivalry was channeled towards the betterment of the Beatles as a totality. Apart, it is only destructive.
Most insidiously, I fear that John sees himself in the role of truth-teller, and, as such, can justify any kind of self-indulgent brutality in the name of truth.
J.Hy says: The line "you live with straights" is not referring to heterosexuals. Back then, "straight" was slang for square, not cool, essentially anyone who didn't smoke pot or like rock 'n' roll. The line "jump when your momma tell you anything" can either be misogyny rearing its ugly head for one more go, or else an attempt to infantilize McCartney as a child, depending on how the word momma is interpreted. In purely musical terms, the song is Lennon at his most effective, Harrison contributes another badass guitar solo, and even the violins added on top of the rock music make a strong contribution to the sound. But that still doesn't excuse the cruelty of the lyrics for me.
How?
The lyrics are a faithful account of a turning point or crisis in the progress of one's psychological development, but it's risky to go there without slipping into self-indulgence. The music of this song never gels and isn't strong enough to support the challenging lyrics. Also, the sound is overproduced, as though trying to compensate for the musical weakness. Shifting time signatures can be tricky to handle; done well, they can propel a song's rhythmic verve. Here, though, the metrical shifts just make it drag. The way "How?" immediately follows "How Do You Sleep?" in the track listing diminishes its impact by making it look like a fading echo of the previous song.
Oh Yoko!
The Imagine album worked its way through some heavy material. This song, with its bouncy rhythm and sunny major key, was well-placed at the end, to leave the listeners with some nice cheery warmth. The music is so naïve and innocent, it would be well suited to a Saturday morning show for children, were it not for the subtle eroticism in the lyrics.
Yoko Ono is an accomplished artist and a notable feminist. She turned Lennon into the most outspoken male feminist of all time. She's gotten a bum rap from the haters who unjustly blame her for destroying the Beatles. Truth is, the Beatles destroyed themselves all on their own. It was not Ono's fault at all. The hate directed against her is for being an independent, strong woman of color who crashed the all-white boys' club. She became a lightning rod for the ugly underside of racism and misogyny in the rock world, where Asians don't count and women are expected to be mute and subservient. It's long past due for Ono's reputation to be rehabilitated and for her to get the recognition and appreciation she's earned. This song refutes the haters, who would claim to be Lennon's fans while slagging off the woman he loved so passionately. This song is pure giddy love. Lennon's incredibly sloppy harmonica playing, sounding like a child's first attempt at the instrument, is tossed in to fit this carefree mood.
Imagine the clouds dripping.
Dig a hole in your garden
to put them in.
-Yoko Ono, 1964