Steely Dan vs John Lennon: The Feud That Signified the End of The Beatles Era

Far Out Magazine ^ | SAT 21ST JAN 2023 | Tom Taylor

[dfwgator]

Gilmour was the one who made sure Syd Barrett was well taken care of.

[dfwgator]

The other thing is that Waters treated Rick Wright like crap. And some of my favorite early PF songs are Wright’s songs like “Paintbox”.

[Burma Jones]

Kind of a dopey, straw-man article. Makes it sound like because Lennon wrote that retarded song in 1971, he was some kind of evangelist for that “Imagine” spirit the rest of his life. Not really. “Imagine no possessions”? Given that Yoko’s net worth is probably $600MM+, John didn’t “imagine” that one very long or very hard.

[Dr. Sivana]

Try as ‘Imagine’ might, Lennon’s attempt to set the world to rights didn’t do much.

It wasn't that. It was a ditty he wrote.

In fact, his ONLY #1 song preaches the opposite, and it came out only a few years later, "Whatever Gets You Through the Night". He just wrote what came into his then drug-addled head.

[dfwgator]

And that was only #1 because it was a duet with Elton John, who was the biggest star at that time.

[BDParrish]

"...wasn't a prayer..."

Depends on whether or not it is understood in the sense of Transcendental Meditation. As I understand it, and please correct me anyone, if you get enough people to "visualize" something especially simultaneously, then some mystical power makes it happen.

[Magic Fingers]

Only a fool would say that.

[nesnah]

John Lennon was a jerk and I never liked him.

---

All of his solo music sucked to.

Imagine.....🤢

[Mama Shawna]

Same here. I like them both, but Steely Dan much better.

[mund1011]

Perhaps in my age I’m forgetting some of Gilmours jewels without Roger - There’s No Way out of Here; Murder; Learning to Fly.
I experienced “There’s No Way out of Here” for the first time on hell night when I was a fraternity pledge. That and In a Godda Da Vida. Good times 40 years ago.

[ifinnegan]

What a fool believes.

[Lovely-Day-For-A-Guinness]

With Sean as proof, Lennon did it without the fez on. At least once.

Excuse me while I go barf now as Yoko is a triple bag woofer.

[dfwgator]

I could watch Zappa’s interviews all day, even if there were some things I disagreed with him about.

[Subcutaneous Fishstick Blues]

Then there’s Steely Dan’s “What a Beautiful World” tune.

I assume you mean I.G.Y. from Donald Fagen's solo album, The Nightfly.

I’ve never heard that it was done ironically.

Were you waiting for someone to tell you?

Okay, maybe it's not irony. But I always assumed that in the context of the concept of that album, which was apparently about him growing up in the late 50s/early 60s listening to late night jazz radio, it was about youthful exuberance and optimism, before he became a hardcore cynic.

There's also a track on there called The New Frontier, also done unironically, based on a saying of JFK's. And we all know what happened to JFK.

So it could be nostalgia for the time before he turned cynical, channeling the thoughts and feelings of his younger self, in which case you would technically be right.

[dfwgator]

A just machine
To make big decisions

Programmed by fellas
With compassion and vision

In a nutshell, exactly what the Deep State wants.

[Desparado]

Maybe so, but there’s no denying that many of the great rock stars of that era acknowledge that the guitar solo on Reeling in the Years was possibly one of the greatest of the times. And there were a number of other great solos in their songs of that period.

[AppyPappy]

He meant “Imagine YOU have no possessions”

[dfwgator]

IGY was all about the predictions for 1976, “well by ‘76, we’ll be A-OK!”

[dfwgator]

Well he moved away from the UK, because he “imagined no taxes”.

[AppyPappy]

It beats the Hell out of Tubular Bells.

For those who don’t know, they play music in the room where the pledges are awaiting Initiation so they don’t hear what is going on.