[Bloody Sam Roberts]

The one thing that Joel seems to have missed is the title of the song; "Imagine".

Lennon isn't saying that any of these things is possible or particularly preferable. Only that we should imagine them. It's called daydreaming. For is doing so, perhaps we can take a small something from the process and apply it to real life. Like maybe treating each other a little better.

G'head, flame away.

[metalboy]

Imagine was written as a comment on that Democrat nightmare called Vietnam (something that liberals will always blame Nixon for. Johnson, who`s that?) All he`s saying is "Imagine if the world was like this, wouldn`t it be cool?" Nowhere in that song does he say "we must live like this and force other people to live like this". The mistake liberals make is assuming that, because their IQ is in the double digit range, and also that line that says, "You may say I`m a dreamer but I`m not the only one. I hope some day you`ll join us and the world will be as one" The word is "HOPE". He isn`t saying "You must" join us. Who wouldn`t hope all people would be like that? Of course it`s impossible, even Lennon himself proved that with that with the "no possesions" part, but that`s why he calls it IMAGINE. It isn`t called "We MUST". Liberals take it that he is saying "we must" because they`re thick headed morons. Lennon wasn`t a moron, yes he was a bit of a nut, but he was also a guy who absolutely refused to live in the past like this idiot Neil Young, and would see things for what they were in the present. I highly doubt that if he were alive today and still lived in NYC, that he would be so incredibly stupid as to sing "Imagine" like this dingbat Yoko every five seconds when his own city was attacked twice by psychotic sand monkeys in a span of less than 10 years, and a new Hiter was running amok. He might have went the way of the UN, but on the other hand he was a freggin` nut, and very well might have said "f- it" and wrote a song called "Bomb the bastards" to shock people, and had a picture of him an Yoko naked on the cover. (Oh man, I`m puking at the thought)

[Peter Libra]

Sticking up for my late fellow Brit here. John Lennon had your P.T. Barnum beat. $250,000,0000 left to his wife. Defied deportation as a hard line drug addict. Plus his song about the poor people of Liverpool, who would give you what they had. Starkey another one- with his gated mansion in Buckinghamshire. And they said the London Cockney was the smartest thing on two legs- working class that is.

[blowfish]

Well, I happen to think it's a beautiful piece of music, and I view the song as an expression of a heartfelt longing for a better world and more spiritual people (and I'm sure Lennon would have included himself at the top of the list), not as a call for the Communist Manifesto. If you start taking song lyrics too literally and seriously you might as stop listening to music altogether.

[Revolting cat!]

The best you can say for it is that it's hippie schmaltz! No different from bopper schmaltz sung 10 years earlier by the likes of Bobby Vinton. And among that was at least one song, Blue on Blue, written by Burt Bacharach and the master lyricist Hal David. So there!

[Revolting cat!]

Imagine no Hitlery, 
And no fans legion too!

[F16Fighter]

IMO, The Youngbloods' 'Get Together' was a far more substantial lyrical/melodious/ song than 'Imagine.'

'Imagine' keeps in line with Satan's great lie -- NO judgement, No accountibility, NO reward for the righteous.

[dmz]

There is some interesting (IMO) irony in this discussion.

Freepers, generally speaking, would like to see children use their imaginations more, and decrease the anti-imaginative activities (TV, video/computer games, etc.) they are involved in.

What kind of world do we think a child would tend to imagine...a capitalist society or one that is more utopian? Would they tend to imagine "World Peace" or "World War"?

I'm thinking they imagine something more resembling utopia than something resembling the real world. My opinion only.

Is it not possible (and probably more correct) to view Lennon's Imagine as the child-like musings of a utopian?

Just a thought.

As an aside, (and sure to get me in trouble), I refuse to vet the musicians I listen to for political appropriateness.

[mc5cents]

Some of Lennon's songs make about as much sense as the famous poem "What The Blind Man Saw" which goes in part:

One bright day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight
Back to back they faced each other
Drew their swords and shot each other
A deaf policeman heard the noise
He came and killed those two dead boys
One bright day in the middle of the night

As I was walkin' up the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh how I wish he'd go away

John could have written that I suppose.

[SamAdams76]

Yeah, I think it's a goofy song lyric-wise. Nice melody though and I don't mind hearing it every now and then. I even learned to play it on the piano some years back. I'm a fan of Lennon's music for the most part but there are Lennon songs even more annoying than "Imagine." Such as "Mother" and "Women are the n*gger of the world" and just about anything he ever did with Yoko Ono. I really like Lennon's material on "Double Fantasy" (his last album) minus the Yoko stuff, of course, which ruins an otherwise brilliant album. Point it, Lennon had plenty of good material left in him and had he not been killed, he would have been putting out a lot of good music during the 1980s and 90s. Certainly better stuff than what Paul McCartney has been putting out.

I sometime wonder that if I was born 10 or 15 years earlier, if I would be a 60s hippie. I came of age in 1980, the year of Ronald Reagan, and I've been pretty much a conservative since then. I shudder to think of how I might have turned out had I come of age in 1967 instead.

Anyhow, the evening of December 8, 1980 is etched in my memory. Definitely a "JFK" moment in my life. I remember exactly what I was doing. I had Monday Night Football (the Patriots were playing) on the TV and I was practicing situps (I was to report to Marine boot camp in just a few more weeks) and I overheard Howard Cosell mentioning "John Lennon" and "shot" and "dead on arrival" in the same sentence. My heart skipped a few beats and I immediately turned on my radio and you could hear nothing but Beatles music across the entire FM band. For the next week, most rock stations played nothing but Beatles and Lennon music around the clock. I'll admit, even though I now deplore the liberal ideology that Lennon stood for, I am still very sad for what happened. The man didn't deserve to die that way and I hope they never let that assassin out of custody.

[CyberCowboy777]

I like it...!

[wireman]

The freakin' song is almost 33 years old - Who gives a rat's ass what it says.

The guy who wasted his time writing this story needs to get a life.

[GATOR NAVY]

It's basically a goofy song but I have fond memories of it. Singing it karaoke here in Japan has got me many free beers over the years, and in my pre-married days, it was a good way to pick up Japanese girls.

"Ooooo, sugoi..."