John Lennon's Song 'Imagine' and Its Influence on Society

Imagine your perfect world, what would it look like? John Lennon imagines his perfect world; In his song “Imagine” John looks into what it would be like. With Lennon being a member of the hit band of “The Beatles” they were a part of the English Invasion of the 1960’s. The Beatles were one of the most popular bands of the century. Lennon's “Imagine” gives an in depth reflection on his politics over his career, most during the turbulent 60’s and 70’s spefciclly keeping Vietnam, Capitalism and while aslo analyzing his life with the Beatles helps you understand lennon.

Elvis Presley's explosion onto the rock music scene inspired a 16-year-old Lennon to create the skiffle band called the QuarryMen, named after his school. Lennon met Paul McCartney at a church fete on July 6, 1957. He soon invited McCartney to join the group, and the two eventually formed one of the most successful songwriting partnerships in musical history. In 1963, a sharp-suited Beatles would record their first LP Please Please Me, a roaring success in the UK, peaking at number 1 in the charts. Extensive European tours followed. As thousands of fans filled the streets outside venues on a nightly occurrence. The bands scale saw the soon become the most popular band in Europe with it soon coming over to the usa where it saw a reaction unlike any other. The reaction to the band was dubbed Beatlemania. 1964 saw the ‘British Invasion’, with The Beatles hitting the USA for the first time. The Ed Sullivan Show played host to their first US television performance, which was a landmark for the band and was watched by approximately 73 million viewers in the States.

With no plans for further shows, The Beatles took to the studio with a more experimental approach to their music. Following The Beatles’ break-up, their final studio LP Let It Be was released on May 8th 1970; now regarded a poignant finale for the group which shook the world. Lennon left the Beatles in September 1969, just after the group completed recording Abbey Road. The news of the break-up was kept secret until McCartney announced his departure in April 1970, a month before the band released Let It Be, recorded just before Abbey Road.Not long after the Beatles broke up, in 1970, Lennon released his debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, featuring a raw, minimalist sound that followed 'primal-scream' therapy. He followed that project with 1971's Imagine, the most commercially successful and critically

The impact of the song is unquestionable. But disguised within its message of peace and love and its flowing piano melody is a collection of edgy, 'dangerous' ideas that challenge society as we know it. The song that has become an anthem all over the world is actually full of controversial lyrics and radical ideas. Lennon once called it '’Working Class Hero’ for conservatives,” and indeed, it challenges the status quo at its most fundamental. Lennon composed the song in one session, sitting at his white grand piano in his Tittenhurst Park estate in England in May 1971. His wife, Yoko Ono, watched him as he played the melody and wrote most of the lyrics. He recorded it in his home studio with help from other musicians who all thought uncharacteristically kept the track fairly simple.

Starting with their famous “Bed-Ins for Peace,” Lennon and Ono turned the tables on the paparazzi that dogged their every move in order to stage their own unique anti-war “happening.” It was an inspired tactic on the duo’s part, and one that has never been successfully repeated by any other celebrity of note since then. Using their honeymoon at the Amsterdam Hilton in March 1969 as a launch pad for their anti-war efforts, the Lennons invited the worldwide media to join them in their hotel suite, where they sat in bed for two weeks straight, from nine in the morning to nine at night, engaging in discussions about world peace. A second Bed-In followed three months later in Montreal, where Lennon wrote and recorded what was to become the unofficial refrain of the peace movement. lending their support to the plight of the working class by way of a shipbuilders’ work-in, railing against the Vietnam War, voicing their discontent over the brutal murders of 14 unarmed civil rights protesters in Northern Ireland.

Lennon and Ono moved to the United States in September 1971, but were constantly threatened with deportation by the NixonAdministration. Lennon was told that he was being kicked out of the country due to his 1968 marijuana conviction in Britain, but the singer believed that he was being removed because of his activism against the unpopular Vietnam War. Documents later proved him correct (two years after Nixon resigned, in 1976, Lennon was granted permanent U.S. residency). Campaign of surveillance and harassment by the U.S. government — spearheaded by J. Edgar Hoover, an attempt by President Richard Nixon to have him “neutralized” and deported, and an FBI file more than 400 pages deep. Senator Strom Thurmond sent a memo to Attorney General John Mitchell in February 1972 declaring that Lennon could pose a serious threat to the re-election of Richard Nixon that year. Lennon could allegedly mobilize the youth vote against Nixon as well as donate sizeable sums of money for rallies that would disrupt Nixon's idea of an orderly America.

In 1973, the singer formed a conceptualized state called Nutopia, which would have no boundaries or passports. Everyone would be a citizen and ambassador of the imaginary country. In 1973, John and Yoko also attended the Watergate hearings in Washington, D.C. “More than any ideology, more than any religion, more than Vietnam or any war or nuclear bomb, the single most important reason for the diffusion of the Cold War was… The Beatles.” Mikhail Gorbachev

Impact of “Imagine” is complex. At first listen, it's easy to think of it as a simple ballad, a song of peace and a piano-driven melody. But the call of peace calls for the abolition of what we often cling to most fiercely. It's not a blueprint, with instructions on how to give up some of the parameters by which we define ourselves, but a call for us to imagine something that seems unimaginable in the world we live in. It's revolutionary without calling for literal revolution and has no less relevance in the uncertain world of today than it did in 1971 when it was written.