Imagine

Posted by Guest Blogger on Sunday, 09 October 2005 12:37.

I have always found John Lennon’s Imagine, his ode to peace and love ... well, odious.

“Imagine there’s no countries” the song implores us, and then “Imagine no possessions, / I wonder if you can, / No need for greed or hunger, / a brotherhood of man, / Imagine all the people / Sharing all the world ... “

The problem is not so much that this is impractical (“You may say I’m a dreamer”), but that it’s shallow and false. Someone really capable of love and regard for others doesn’t jettison his own particular traditions and relations in favour of an abstract brotherhood of the entire global population.

So it was no surprise to read that Lennon was not in real life the most peaceful or loving of men. There’s this, for example, from his first wife Cynthia:

“One night we were at a party and John went mad when someone told him his friend Stuart and I were dancing together. As soon as I saw the look on John’s face we stopped and, as so often before, I reassured him that it was him I loved. He seemed to accept it.

“But the next day at college, he followed me to the girls’ loos in the basement. When I came out he was waiting, with a dark look on his face. Before I could speak he raised his arm and hit me across the face, knocking my head into the pipes that ran down the wall behind me. Without a word he walked away, leaving me dazed, shaky and with a very sore head.”
(The Age, Good Weekend, October 1 2005)

Could this real John Lennon fit into his own “brotherhood of man sharing all the world”? It’s something hard to imagine.

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Comments:

Posted by john fitzgerald on Sun, 09 Oct 2005 15:03 | #

The lyrics of Lennon and the band he used to be in never got passed the high school level.
There are a few quality pop writers, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone being one -
http://www.tomlab.de/

(his first cd isn’t so good)

Posted by Matra on Sun, 09 Oct 2005 17:37 | #

Soren: the fact that Lennon hit his girlfriend at one time does not make a lie out of pacifism expressed by him at another time

I think he hit her and Yoko a lot more than once. One biographer says he donated money to NORAID - an IRA support group in the US. Later John became a woman’s rights activist and his song Woman is the Nigger of the World was meant to convey his feelings on the subject. Like most millionaire celebrities he was a hypocrite. That said, near the end of his life he seemed to wise up a bit. In his last interview for Rolling Stone he said some rather politically incorrect things.

it occurs to me that there is a reference to violence against a girlfriend in one of the songs from “Sgt. Pepper”: “...I used to be cruel to my woman/I beat her and kept her away from the things that she loved…”

The song Getting Better was one of Paul’s and it is apparently true: He used to beat up his girlfriend of the time (not Linda Eastman). There were very few Lennon/McCartney compositions. They wrote their own songs but put both names on them.

Posted by Matra on Sun, 09 Oct 2005 17:46 | #

Here’s a clip from that John Lennon interview:

http://www.colbycosh.com/old/june05.html#llep

Bob Geldof wouldn’t be happy to read that interview.

Posted by Kubilai on Sun, 09 Oct 2005 18:12 | #

Thanks Matra for that link. It was quite enlightening. Quite outspoken and non-PC, that Lennon. He could have been quite a prominent voice to rail against the establishment in his crotchety old age if he was still alive. Yet again, the chances were good he could have simply been molded into another festering boil against western man at the hands of “Yucko Oh-No”. Pity we’ll never know.

Posted by AD on Sun, 09 Oct 2005 20:58 | #

I’ve found that people who try and purvey an image of being ‘do gooders’ tend to be bitter, greedy, rude and jaded when they’re not talking social issues. Their lack of intellectual honesty makes for lots of pent up hostility. They don’t make good dinner party hosts.

That said, some of the best sex of my life has been with bitchy left-wing chicks.

Posted by Mrs. Blessed on Mon, 10 Oct 2005 05:43 | #

Interesting post. I know nothing about Lennon (hard to do, avoiding all that, even for a Gen X like myself, but I work hard at it!), but I do recall the rumors of Jackson Browne beating Daryl Hannah. I hate the man’s politics but do love his music, and I would often ponder the allegation when listening to songs like “Doctor My Eyes” and “Tender is the Night:”

And in the hard light of an angry sun
No one remembers what was said or done
Tender are the words they choose
You win, I win, we lose