Inspired by his wife’s writing, John Lennon pens an iconic anthem
It did not top the charts in the UK until after his death, yet has gone on to become the best-selling single of his solo career.
Late in the morning of May 27, 1971, John Lennon began rehearsing for the recording of a new song, Imagine.
Working in his newly built Ascot Sound Studio at his home in Tittenhurst Park, Ascot, Berkshire, with producer Phil Spector and wife Yoko Ono, Lennon first introduced his band to the song, rehearsing until the early evening, when they were ready to record.
They completed the session in minutes, recording three takes and choosing the second one for release.
While Lennon originally claimed all the credit for the lyrics, he later admitted they were inspired by Ono’s 1964 book Grapefruit, saying the song “should be credited as a Lennon/Ono song. A lot of it – the lyric and the concept – came from Yoko, but in thosedaysIwasabitmore selfish, a bit more macho, and I sort of omitted her contribution, but it was right out of Grapefruit”.
Ono described the lyrical statement of Imagine as: “Just what John believed: that we are all one country, one world, one people.”
Meanwhile, Lennon had begun work on what would become the music for the song as early as 1969.
An original piano musical motif, later called “John’s Piano Piece”, close to the final one was created in January 1969 during the Let It Be sessions.
Lennon finished composing Imagine one morning in early 1971, on a Steinway piano, in a bedroom at Tittenhurst Park. Ono watched as he composed the melody, chord structure and almost all the lyrics, nearly completing the song in one brief writing session.
Upon its release the song’s lyrics upset some religious groups, particularly the line “Imagine there’s no heaven”.
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: “Antireligious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anticapitalistic, 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.”
Lennon released Imagine as a single in the United States, where it peaked at No 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was first issued as a single in Britain in 1975, to promote the compilation Shaved Fish, and reached No 6 on the UK Singles Chart that year.
Broadcast Music Inc, the US performing rights organisation named Imagine one of the 100 most-performed songs of the 20th Century.
In 1999, it was ranked No 30 on the Recording Industry Association of America’s list of the 365 “Songs of the Century”, earned a Grammy Hall of Fame Award, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll”.
A 2002 UK survey conducted by the Guinness World Records British Hit Singles Book named it the second-best single of all time, while Rolling Stone ranked it No 3 in the 2004 list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.
Imagine has sold more than 1.7 million copies in the UK. More than 200 artists have performed or covered the song, including Madonna, Stevie Wonder, Joan Baez, Lady Gaga, Elton John and Diana Ross.