Posted on 08/06/2007 5:56:23 AM PDT by John Galt 72
Imagine Piano Celebrates John Lennons Absurd Magnum Opus
By Matt Carrothers
August 6, 2007
Forget ground surges, new military leaders, tapping terrorists 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 Lennons 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 Michaels The Imagine Piano Peace Project. As Wall Street Journal writer Ann Zimmerman notes, This Steinway upright piano is showing up at some of the nations most grisly sites of violence, death and destruction . . . all sites of cruelty and murder.
Caroline True, the projects choreographer, says on the projects web site, Kenny and Georges 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 mens rooms have the decency to knock first.
Lennons 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 inmates 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 dont know. Um, I dont know what to say. I dont know. I didnt 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. Lennons magnum opus is an ode to atheism, communism, and the songwriters 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 theres no heaven/Its easy if you try. Judeo-Christian values inspired Americas 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 theres no countries/It isnt hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too/Imagine all the people/Living life in peace.
Lennons 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 youll 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 Lennons 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.
“Lennons magnum opus is an ode to atheism, communism, and the songwriters 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.
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