I was surfing around the internet for my news items post and came across a reference to John Lennon’s “Imagine”. The song came out in 1971 the year I started college. It rose in popularity some years later when younger people were more in tune with the New World Order, and went off the charts again after Lennon was killed in 1980. All of us baby-boomers knew the three-minute song fairly well. What we did not know was how globally popular it was and continues to be. If the NWO needed a theme song “Imagine” would be it.
Here are some things I just found out during my research.
When asked about the song during one of his final interviews, Lennon said he considered it to be as strong a composition as any he had written with the Beatles. He described the song’s meaning and explicated its commercial appeal: “Anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic, but because it is sugarcoated it is accepted . . . Now I understand what you have to do. Put your political message across with a little honey.”
Since 2005 the organizers of the Times Square New Years festival play the song just before the ball drops. Gives new meaning to “dancing with the devil” doesn’t it? It was also sung at a couple of Olympic event openers.
Now check this list out. Some of the singers on this queue were a real surprise to me.
What do they have in common? They have all sang “Imagine” in at least one public venue.
Stevie Wonder, Joan Baez, Diana Ross, Elton John, Lady Gaga, David Bowie, Liza Minelli, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, some 200 others, including, oddly enough, Dolly Parton.
Lastly, the witch Yoko Ono herself waited until 2018 to perform her rendition of the song. She says she helped to write it and no doubt she did. Yes, I called her a witch. She is proud to be so and proclaims it publicly. She has produced two albums titled, “I Am a Witch” 1 & 2. I always assumed she was a witch. I mean, if it walks like a duck etc . . . . Now I know she’s a duck.
Ringo Starr, in a 1981 interview with Barbara Walters, defended the song’s “no possessions” lyric saying Lennon “said ‘imagine,’ that’s all, just imagine it.” Well “I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love . . . No, no, no, nooo.” The poor man could not take his $800 million or his $726 Florida mansion with him to the next life. No possessions? It was only “imagination” after all.
Lennon was raised Anglican and so was validly baptized. McCartney and Harrison were raised Catholic. In the hope that he converted before death may God have mercy on him.
