I’ve discussed this before, but here are some thoughts on one of the dumbest songs ever written (Give Peace A Chance is a runner up). It never previously occurred to me, though that Lennon might have actually been mocking his own fans with it. I suppose it’s possible.
18 thoughts on “Imagine”
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I think it’s quite possible, sort of in the same vein as “Back in the USSR”.
I think Lennon’s promo (an early music video) was completely serious.
I think that you and other critics of the song, in your understandable eagerness to be anti-communist, are not doing sufficient imagining with regard to technology. In a world of backup tapes, there would be no need to die for even the most important goals. In a world of nanotech cornocopia machines, spacecraft, and *extremely* plentiful energy, there might be no need for physical possessions. The same might be said for a computer-created world, such as the one aboard a coke-can sized interstellar spacecraft Charlie Stross described in Accelerando.
It is fine for East-bloc victims to be bitter about the wealthy West, but just as the American founding fathers had it better than other subservient colonies, people who have it good often dream of having it better. Technophiles such as the ones who frequent this blog should have no trouble imagining that technology could shake things up, quite possibly for the better with luck and hard work.
On the other hand, the music video did show Yoko and John enjoying a beautiful house. If you used less imagination, you could imagine John saying “Look at this great house I’ve got! You don’t have a posssession this nice! Ha ha!”
Communism did lead to much evil, but sarcastic anti-communism is boring compared to dreams of a human-built techno-paradise.
If you want sarcasm about techno-paradise, “I.G.Y.” is the song that springs to mind.
I gave peas a chance.
They’re pretty good with butter and salt.
But no mint!
visualize whirled peas.
“… sarcastic anti-communism is boring compared to dreams of a human-built techno-paradise.” Also, my car is boring compared to an ocean liner. Did I miss the point in Lennon’s life when he became a nanotech-promoting extropian? Anyway, what I’m actually here to mention is the phenomenally grotesque (and not at all ironic, from the point of view of the moviemakers) use of “Imagine” at the end of “The Killing Fields,” which nearly ruined the entire movie.
Jay,
These were the same movie makers who found a way to blame the US for that mess. Of course they didn’t get the irony.
Rand, thanks for the link. I’ve been thinking about the possibility that Lennon was being sarcastic all day. Jay, Lennon certainly wasn’t a nanotech promoter, but I think he was promoting the idea of dreaming big, and I think the people who criticize the song in terms of the specific ideological confines of 1971 aren’t dreaming big enough. For Rand and his readers (including me) dreaming big involves changing the world via high technology.
So Bob-1 let me get this straight, you are saying that anti- “philosophy which killed more people than any other philosophy in the history of mankind” is boring?
Wow. Just…. wow.
“If you want sarcasm about techno-paradise, “I.G.Y.” is the song that springs to mind”
It is a song about how Donald Fagen thought the future would turn out during his liftetime when he was a young teen viewed thru the lens of the lat 50’s and early 60’s.
Hey, Nancy is doing her darndest to secure “more leisure time for artist everywhere…”
Cecil, I haven’t said one nice thing about communism. I’m just saying that sarcasm won’t be inspiring. People put up a monument to “Imagine” because they were inspired.
If you want a song about freedom to be inspiring, sing about freedom, and don’t be sarcastic. I suggest “gedanken sind frei” which spread around the world. In German, it works as both an anti-Nazi and anti-East-German-regime song, but it has been translated into most languages.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Gedanken_sind_frei
John Lennon’s support for communist utopia ebbed and waned over the years. But he was always a pacifist.. and his philosophy always amounted to “wouldn’t it be nice”. What I find funny is that McCartney took writing credit on a number of these songs, and he never had a more complicated thought than which girl he could sleep with next. “Blackbird” is regularly cited as McCartney’s deepest song, apparently having something to do with emancipation. In a Rolling Stone interview he denies the reference and says he was just looking out the window one day. George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is another favorite for speculation, but the baffling lyrics were simply as a result of picking random words from a book (no doubt while intoxicated). And I heard the most serious rendition of “Hello Goodbye Hello Goodbye” the other day, done by Americans, don’t you folks get the concept of “whimsy”?
The Beatles were a cheap copy of the Rutles.
Hello Get Lost was much better.
Mike Puckett has it right; give me the Tragical History Tour any day!
If you’ve ever listened to any of the versions of “Imagine” that Lennon performed during his Plastic Ono Band/primal scream therapy years, you’ll see that he meant every word.
It’s weird. While Lennon liked to play at being a sensitive, psychedelic poet in granny glasses, at his root he was really a straight-up, leather-jacket, Chuck Berry/Buddy Holly rock and roller. (Lennon’s idolatry of Elvis is well-known.) His ’70s albums _Rock and Roll_ (1975, SK-3419) and the incredibly-rare (and incredibly pricey!) _John Lennon Sings The Great Rock & Roll Hits/Roots_ (1975, Adam VIII A8018) are proof of his love for classic four-chord/twelve-bar boogie rock. It was only when You Know Who got her claws into him that he started wearing white clothes and writing “songs” about Bagism.
NB: “SK-3419” should read “Apple SK-3419”.
Eric Idle was always under-appreciated as a musician. I mean, c’mon — he wrote and performed The Galaxy Song!