John Lennon: Imagine

JOHN LENNON: IMAGINE (1971)

1) Imagine; 2) Crippled Inside; 3) Jealous Guy; 4) It's So Hard; 5) I Don't Want To Be A Soldier Mama; 6) Give Me Some Truth; 7) Oh My Love; 8) How Do You Sleep?; 9) How?; 10) Oh Yoko!.

General verdict: The raging spirit of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, slightly sugar-coated by a superb team of qualified sugar-coaters.

Imagine there's no Beatles (it's easy if you were born after 1980, and even easier if you were born after 2000), no Paul McCartney to shake a stick at, no progressive or punk rock, imagine all the people living without access to Rolling Stone or Pitchforkmedia or any snarky media source that seems to have figured it all out about the greatest musical minds of the 20th century, and try to simply go ahead with your gut feelings. There is a good chance that in such a context, Imagine might seem like the finest pop music album ever made. Unfortunately, such a context is almost as impossible to generate as an antimatter gravitational field in your living room.

The problem with John is that he is very much an artistic gambler. Every now and then, he would raise the stakes so high that he'd be hardly able to call — and in order to enjoy his catalog through and through, you constantly have to deal with moments of hypocrisy and falling back on his own potential. Thus, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band ruptured with his past and established a whole new formula for aspiring singer-songwriters; no sooner had it come out, though, that John went back to a much less ascetic, much more smooth and conventional type of pop sound — all the while continuing to pinch and harass those who, like Paul, never backed away from that type of sound in the first place. Many people cringe at Imagine because it is too soft; many more, I think, cringe at it because it is soft stuff produced by a hard-ass guy accusing others of being soft.

Yet I have never found it to be a big problem. From 1971 and all the way to 1980, issues of creative and challenging musical arrangements did not bother Lennon as much as the issue of saying precisely what he wanted to say at any given moment. Granted, even in his Beatle days he was always more preoccupied with base melody and «idea» as opposed to sophisticated arrange­ment and «innovation» — on his own, he was thoroughly dependent on whatever technical masterminds were at hand, and never bothered much to check whether the final product came out as experimental, artsy, or commercial. Fortunately, the professionalism of the technical master­minds was rarely in doubt, and even if John did frequently sound out of time, this is no longer a problem, now that time has pretty much leveled all genre conventions.

Anyway, even if you have not heard Imagine the LP (not hearing ʽImagineʼ the song would be definitely un-imaginable), you must have guessed by now that this was a perfectly accessible, «normal», regularly produced and arranged pop album, unmarred by avantgarde influences and expanded beyond the stark minimalism of John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band. This time, John had assembled a fairly large team — and what a team it was: Harrison on guitar, Nicky Hopkins on piano, Alan White and Jim Keltner on drums, Klaus Voormann on bass, and even the mighty King Curtis himself dropped in to add saxophone parts to two of the songs (by the way, this was one of King's last, if not the last ever, recording sessions — he'd be stabbed to death one month prior to the album's release). Even Moody Blues fans should be interested, since Mike Pinder is credited for shaking the tambourine on ʽI Don't Want To Be A Soldierʼ (maybe that is why I've always been so partial to that track?..).

No amount of session talent would have saved a bad album, of course, but John was still on a roll: every single song here is at least memorable and/or fun, and quite a few are masterpieces. There is no single theme, but most of the songs are centered around the usual subjects — sarcastic put-downs of those who have it wrong (ʽCrippled Insideʼ, ʽHow Do You Sleep?ʼ), political protests (ʽI Don't Want To Be A Soldierʼ, ʽGive Me Some Truthʼ), personal crises (ʽIt's So Hardʼ, ʽHow?ʼ), relationship issues (ʽJealous Guyʼ), and Yoko (ʽOh My Loveʼ, ʽOh Yoko!ʼ). At the very least, this certainly gave John the advantage of being able to claim that all of his art is still directly related to significant personal experience, rather than, you know, singing about dogs with three legs, monkberry moon delights, and eating at home.

Prefacing all that is the title track, sincere and innocent enjoyment of which has been rendered impossible by incessant profanation — miriads of bland covers, radio overplay, commercials, and, most importantly, ripping out of context. Personally, I can still enjoy ʽImagineʼ just fine when it sits close to the acidic-venomous ʽCrippled Insideʼ, rather than finds itself in the company of church hymns, Amazing Graces, ʽTake Me Home, Country Roadsʼ, and other similar setlists created by and for very idealistic, very boring, and (typically) very obnoxious young people who prefer a very straightforward approach to the idea of spiritual enlightenment. But there is no getting away from the simplistic magnificence of the piano melody — a stately, but humble escalator to Heaven — or from the awesomeness of the "yoo hoo" falsetto hook, whose personal magic I am not able to explain in words, because it does not fall neatly under any type of emotion I am aware of. As for the «communist» lyrics of the song, which are so off-putting to all those who never fail to point out that John Lennon himself had always been quite particular about his "possessions", for some reason, they have never bothered me — maybe because the song in general is such a cloud-walking musical utopia that it never came across as «preachy» to me, even despite the "I hope someday you'll join us" line.

Anyway, ʽImagineʼ is just one out of ten songs on Imagine — and it is pretty hard for me to pick a favorite. The whole thing is evenly divided into a «tender John» and a «nasty John» part, so evenly, in fact, that sometimes I think it would have been great fun to amend the sequencing so that each of the two would inhabit a separate side of vinyl. But although the tender-nasty dicho­thomy would persist all the way up to Walls And Bridges, John was always particular about interweaving those two sides of his personality in his art, just as they were so tightly interwoven in his real life. There is nothing surprising that the biggest dick in the world can also be its most passionate and sympathetic lover, after all.

The real good news here is that John's team, assembled for the album, was able to perfectly amplify both of those sides. A large part of my own love for Imagine is due not to John's tor­mented personality, but to the little things that his friends contribute to the expression of said personality. For instance, ʽIt's So Hardʼ could be a fairly generic blues-rocker, if not for King Curtis' panicky sax solo, conveying the idea of all of life's problems much more explicitly than John's vocals — but the best bit is John's guitar duet with the strings of The Flux Fiddlers, first in call-and-response form and then as they bring it down together in a single joint wail of despe­ration. (There is also the irony of using the line "sometimes I feel like going down" in both of its possible senses, but that's just a bit of classic John hooliganry).

One song that is typically discarded even by fans of the album is ʽI Don't Want To Be A Soldierʼ: too long, too noisy, too repetitive, too simplistic, too «ugly». It is all of that, for sure, and perhaps I am too influenced here by childhood memories when I used to be transfixed and terrified by it, but even today it strikes me as something musically unique — not just in Lennon's catalog, but in general. If there is one single influence for that song, I'd go ahead and place my bets on Bitches Brew: a long, multi-layered, controlled-chaos jazz-rock jam functioning as a tribalistic ritual, except that certain complexities are sacrificed in order to make the effect spookier. With Harrison contributing some of the most aggressive slide licks he ever laid down, with Nicky Hopkins doing those agitated, paranoid piano runs in the background, with Jim Keltner causing minor earthquakes with his drum patterns, with King Curtis creating total saxophone havoc in the solo sections with multiple overdubs, how could anyone in his right mind be bored with this apocalyptic sonic panorama? Perhaps John's single repeated vocal line with minimal variations is what pisses people off, but it is so insignificant next to that voodoo they all do so well — and speaking of "well", some of John's "we-e-e-e-e-ell, I-I-I-I..." are creepy as hell here. As far as I am concerned, never again would the man rise to the same levels of sonic nightmare — and this on one of his «tenderest» albums, too.

Then there is the case of ʽHow Do You Sleep?ʼ. God knows I admire Paul McCartney and his genius as much as is permissible without getting too embarrassed about it, and clearly, the venom in John's lyrics is mean, offensive, disturbing hyperbole. But who are we to judge, particularly when that venom is being spewed from the mouth of somebody who used to know McCartney a hundred times better than all of us combined? And do not throw all the blame on John, either: a major part of ʽHow Do You Sleep?ʼ is made up by George's inventive, melodic, and equally poisonous and vicious slide guitar lines — every time I listen to that solo, I can just feel Harrison grinning from ear to ear as he is finally given the chance to take a shot of sweet revenge at the one man who once forced him to "play anything you want". Sure, it's mean and dirty, but it's just so damn classy at the same time — and although some of the lyrics are too explicit and dated, the song itself has never lost its relevance. (In fact, it was a very natural association to me after my initial impressions of Adele's 25).

Switching topics and skipping over to «tender John», we also find consistently great stuff. ʽJealous Guyʼ is ample evidence that the man who can toss out the sickest and dirtiest insults in the musical world can also issue the sweetest, most moving pleas for forgiveness — the whole song is a letter-perfect exercise in psychological therapy. (I also do believe that Nicky Hopkins should have been co-credited for the song, which is totally made by his piano — even if the song originally started life as ʽChild Of Natureʼ back in India, it never properly came to life until Nicky worked out the piano pattern). ʽOh My Loveʼ reprises the minimalistic approach from Plastic Ono Band, but is again much aided by Hopkins' piano — providing the perfect reali­sations for John's parsimonious musical genius: a classic case of how to make a tender love ballad without lapsing into the sin of sugary sentimentality. And ʽHow?ʼ, which some people have shrugged off as four minutes of soft pap, actually aches and throbs as much as ʽMotherʼ — it has simply been sugarcoated a little bit, with pleading and complaining instead of screaming, and with extra strings and vibraphones softening and dulling, but not eliminating the pain. Besides, "how can I feel something if I just don't know how to feel?" is such a good question, we should probably ask it of ourselves far more often...

With ʽCrippled Insideʼ featuring even more first-rate guitar and piano work from George and Nicky, and with ʽGive Me Some Truthʼ containing some of the finest-worded insults in Lennon history ("short-haired yellow-bellied son of tricky dicky" takes the cake), the only song on the album that is less than perfection is... well, you know. Not because of the word "Yoko", even: more because there is an oddly grating dissonance between the triumphant, ecstatic tone of the lyrics and the production of the song, which fails to properly realize that anthemic potential. The melody is suggestive of some long-winded tell-tale country ballad (think Dylan's ʽFrankie Lee And Judas Priestʼ, or something — it might not be a total coincidence that this is the only song on the album to feature a harmonica solo), while the words are a hyperbolic love prayer — the final combo just does not seem to "turn you on" precisely as promised. (ʽDear Yokoʼ on Double Fantasy would be somewhat more successful in that respect). Not to mention, of course, that the song is somewhat anti-climactic, especially compared to the stately coda of ʽGodʼ and the creepy post-coda of ʽMy Mummy's Deadʼ. It is just one of those things that added extra fuel to the fire: was it really necessary to end the album with such a blunt and straightforward pledge, when it already had the far subtler and far more touching ʽJealous Guyʼ and ʽOh My Loveʼ — songs that did not mention Yoko's name directly but expressed their feelings far less formalistically? It comes across not so much as a love anthem as a gesture of public self-humiliation.

Nevertheless, despite a slightly lackluster conclusion, Imagine as a whole is nearly perfect. Like almost any of John's records, it could have proudly born the title of Songs Of Love And Hate, had the title not already been appropriated by Leonard Cohen that same year — and, frankly, Imagine is more worthy of the title, because there are very few records in this world whose love songs are more full of love and whose hate songs are more full of hatred, and both of them feel so totally organic. Chalk it up to the crazy power of this guy that I, with a lot of love for Paul McCartney and a lot of, er, um, mixed feelings towards Yoko Ono, can so naturally get behind the emotions on both ʽHow Do You Sleep?ʼ and ʽOh My Loveʼ without a second thought. Rich melodies, classy arrangements, talented backing band, supreme depth of feeling — really, I cannot understand anybody who still has a problem with this record. Sure, it would be much nicer if more of those American Idol or The Voice contestants chose ʽI Don't Want To Be A Soldierʼ instead of ʽImagineʼ, but this is merely one more incentive to stay away from classic rock radio, TV commercials and reality shows, right? Once you do, who knows, not only ʽImagineʼ, but maybe even ʽYesterdayʼ might begin to come in their original colors once more...