"Imagine"
John Lennon
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First released in 1971, and already John Lennon’s most famous post-Beatle song, ‘Imagine’ took on a whole new life of its own following John’s murder in December 1980.
The Beatles’ break-up in 1970 was bitter, public and very acrimonious, and, for a time, the world’s most fabled pop group were spending more time in the Law Courts than the recording studio. But as the new decade got under way, it was time for a fresh start - and four new careers.
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"That should be credited as a Lennon/Ono Song" |
The Beatles were gone, but Lennon was still spurred on by the solo success of George, Ringo and, particularly, Paul. After the controversy caused by his first solo album - 1970’s Plastic Ono Band - with its four-letter words and John’s insistence on styling himself a “working class hero”, Lennon thought it was time to get a touch more soft-centred. He described ‘Imagine’ as “’Working Class Hero’ with chocolate on.”
At the time he wrote ‘Imagine’, John and Yoko were ensconced in a massive 18th century, seven bedroom mansion set amidst a vast 70 acre estate near Ascot... imagine no possessions! The album, featuring that famous white piano, was recorded in the old chapel at Tittenhurst Park but Lennon - who was about to get really, preposterously, political - boasted of the title track: “it is anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic… but because it is sugar-coated, it is accepted.”
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"We had a tiny studio at home" |
 | Join the dots on the verse vocal melody and answering piano figures and a mystic mountain range is revealed, the ninth over each tonic major hanging like a sacred mist on the horizon. The waveform increases in the bridge, and breaks spectacularly at the long falsetto "You" before the more prosaic chorus melody. This is essential John, and the vocal twists in the chorus on "say" and "day" are identical to "This Boy", one of his earliest Beatles' songs. Dominic King |  |
It was legendary record producer Phil Spector who supplied that peerless “sugar coating” when ‘Imagine’ was recorded in the summer of 1971. But a nice earlier version of the song survives, which has Lennon giving a tongue-in-cheek Elvis rendering, and admitting at the end “I quite like that one!”
The piano on which ‘Imagine’ was written has been sold at auction, the hand-written lyrics have also gone, but the song itself lives on. I once asked Klaus Voorman, the track’s bassist, what it was like to have played on a song that became an anthem. He just smiled, and said “the bass is not great - boom, boom boom boom, boom boom…”
When first released, ‘Imagine’ reached No.3 in America and No.6 in Britain but after Lennon’s death in December 1980 the song gave him a posthumous No.1. And the song still carries an enormous emotional resonance, which time has done nothing to diminish. On National Poetry Day 1999, ‘Imagine’ was voted the nation’s favourite song lyric and soon afterwards the re-released single reached No.3.
In 2001, when they changed the name of Liverpool Airport to The John Lennon Airport, John’s widow Yoko unveiled a plaque which read “above us only sky”... As the teenage John Winston Lennon might well have said: “Imagine!”
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| | Test your knowledgeHave a go at the "Imagine" quiz! |
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John Lennon wrote some of pop's finest lyrics. 
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