Posted on 08/06/2007 5:56:23 AM PDT by John Galt 72
‘Imagine Piano’ Celebrates John Lennon’s Absurd Magnum Opus
By Matt Carrothers
August 6, 2007
Forget ground surges, new military leaders, tapping terrorist’s phone calls, free elections, training Iraqi soldiers to defend their own country and any other tactic that is helping the U.S. defeat Islamic fascists. British pop music singer George Michael and his boyfriend Kenny Goss have a better idea to bring peace to the world – John Lennon’s piano.
Michael owns the piano on which Lennon composed the song “Imagine”. Accompanied by white-gloved attendants and a music choreographer, the piano is touring the U.S. as the centerpiece of Michael’s “The Imagine Piano Peace Project.” As Wall Street Journal writer Ann Zimmerman notes, “This Steinway upright piano is showing up at some of the nation’s most grisly sites of violence, death and destruction . . . all sites of cruelty and murder.”
Caroline True, the project’s choreographer, says on the project’s web site, “Kenny and George’s deepest wish is to imagine a world of peace, a world without violence.” And, likely, a world where undercover police officers in Los Angeles public park men’s rooms have the decency to knock first.
Lennon’s piano has visited Dealey Plaza in Dallas, the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, the Oklahoma City Memorial and Virginia Tech University. Zimmerman wrote that a Virginia Tech graduate student spent over an hour with the piano. The student played a song she composed for a murdered friend, and described the hour as “symbolic and healing.”
The piano also visited the Texas State Penitentiary in an apparent protest of a death row inmate’s execution. Texas convict James Clark was put to death on April 11, 2007 for the 1993 robbery, rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl. When asked for his last statement before the execution Clark said, “Uh, I don’t know. Um, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know. I didn’t know anybody was there. Howdy.”
With the execution of James Clark, the death penalty maintains its 100 percent success rate of stopping a robber/murderer/rapist from ever robbing, murdering or raping again. In other words, the Texas justice system gave peace a chance.
“Imagine”, the anthem of every aging-leftist hippie, is perhaps the most absurd song ever written. Lennon’s magnum opus is an ode to atheism, communism, and the songwriter’s own ignorance of the forms of government, economic systems and faith traditions necessary to produce the peace and brotherhood the so-called smart Beatle dreamed of.
The song begins, “Imagine there’s no heaven/It’s easy if you try.” Judeo-Christian values inspired America’s founding fathers, and remain the bedrock of every free, economically prosperous and peace-seeking nation.
Once Heaven is imagined away, Lennon then envisioned a one-world government: “Imagine there’s no countries/It isn’t hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too/Imagine all the people/Living life in peace.”
Lennon’s folly was that the utopia he envisioned would result in utter chaos. Our Cold War victory over the Soviet Union exposed the horrors of totalitarian regimes that attempt to eradicate religion and economic freedom. Peace results when the citizens of orderly representational republics engage daily in free-market commerce with each other and across national boundaries.
Continuing on this communist rant, the song says, “Imagine no possessions/I wonder if you can/No need for greed or hunger/A brotherhood of man.”
With no possessions, how will individuals generate the capital and income needed to alleviate greed or hunger? The collectivist system has been tried, and it has failed every time.
Lennon concluded his hallucinogenic diatribe with, “I hope someday you’ll join us/And the world will live as one.”
Notice that the social-engineering dreamers never want to “live as one” in a world dominated by peaceable, capitalist, free-trading republics rooted in the rule of law and Judeo-Christian values. Ironically, John Lennon is seen in one of his most famous photographs leaning against a wall with his arms folded, a crucifixion necklace around his neck, wearing a white t-shirt that reads, “New York City.”
New York City. As in, the capital city of capitalism.
Another ironic twist in “The Imagine Piano Peace Project” is that the piano has only stopped at American sites of violence, death, destruction, cruelty and murder. Again, history shows that the most violent, destructive and cruelest places on Earth have existed – and continue to exist – under the communist and totalitarian regimes Lennon’s most famous song exalts. Atheist, one-world loving liberals have always loathed the U.S., but despite their shrill protests they never seem quite ready to leave the protected confines of their own private Dakotas.
Instead of writing dopey, acid-induced tributes to Godless, authoritarian utopias, John Lennon should have got back to where he once belonged – writing great songs with Paul, George and Ringo about holding hands and the evil taxman.
I blame Yoko.
© 2007 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
Well he did appear with him, by coincidence, at halftime during a Monday Night Football game, don't know if that exactly translated into Lennon supporting Reagan.
I would venture that Lennon knew it was all a spoof. He made a lot of friends that way. Other persons with his use of narcotics, would have been deported from the USA.
His fame and money got him a pass.
“Lennon’s magnum opus is an ode to atheism, communism, and the songwriter’s own ignorance of the forms of government, economic systems and faith traditions necessary to produce the peace and brotherhood the so-called smart Beatle dreamed of.”
Thank you for summarizing everything I ever thought about this otherwise drippy, dull, whiny (literally - nasal Lennon), lumbering song.
Why did Lennon leave his native England for the US?
“Imagine there’s no taxes....”
on balance, I still think this earth would have been a lot better off without him stinking up the place.
George Harrison was the only one of the four I could really stand. Starr, Lennon and McCartney were full of themselves, George was the only humble and grounded one in the bunch. Eventually Lennon’s weirdness even rubbed off on him.
I’m not talking about their personalities but their contributions to popular music which they improved considerably if you recall the sort of drivel being played on the radio before them. Lennon always had a BS detector and knew how much of what he said was so much drivel. There’s footage of him mocking the song Imagine at his home.
Reminds me of Mr. Rogers’s Land of Make Believe.
Drivel on the radio before him?
Oh please.
These guys are WAY overrated.
The pop music of the late 50s and early 60s was mostly terrible. The Beatles brought a compositional flair to rock music it hadnt had before
Your HO.
MHO is it was very good.
Granted, I’m no “artiste”. I just like what sounds good and don’t analyze it.
Fred Seaman said that Lennon hated Carter, who didn’t recognize Lennon when the two were introduced at Carter’s inaugural gala. Lennon also felt that Carter made America. There was an online interview with Mike Tree, Lennon’s gardener, where Tree said that Lennon liked Reagan because he heard that Reagan was into astrology.
With or without analysis do you think that Paul Anka and Frankie Avalon sounded good?
Peter Jennings used the song at the end of his coverage of the 1986 Statue of Liberty celebration, also.
Their music was different, no doubt about it. But from a musical standpoint they were not very talented or accomplished. Lennon knew three chords and Starr three grooves. They were just headed in a different direction.
Without psychobabble, yes.
BTW, if you ask me, the most-famous part of the Beatles - the hippie part - sounded goonie and “gay” to me. I like the original more-’50s Beatles better.
That Canadian phony?
With respect to the sentiments expressed in the song “Imagine” and other liberal anthems like it, it would be nice to see some of the people exhorting these verses to lead by example by actually giving up their possessions and spending the rest of their lives in a mud hut meditating or something like that. But so far, nobody has stepped up to the plate.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.