[music]

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

Brian: No, that's not the Brian Lehrer Show theme. It's Imagine by John Lennon, obviously. Why? This year on the show, as some of you know, we've been doing an occasional series on the 50th anniversary of so much iconic music. 1971 was by many accounts one of the most important years for a number of genres. We've talked about albums like What's Going on by Marvin Gaye, Jonie Mitchell's Blue, the Miles Davis album Bitches Brew winning a Grammy that year, it was released the year before, and Master of Reality by Black Sabbath. How's that for a diverse array of classics from one year of music?

Now, we come to one of the most iconic of any albums and the title track in particular. Yes, it's Imagine by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. In just a minute, we're going to be so delighted to have with us Sean Ono Lennon. One piece of fairly recent news about Imagine, it's four years old but that makes it fairly recent in the 50-year history of the song, that you may not know is that Yoko Ono was officially added as a co-author, a co-writer of the song. They did that having discovered an old interview excerpt where John had said that "Yoko actually helped a lot with the lyrics, but I wasn't man enough to let her have credit for it." How about that? He said that in 1980. It was shortly before he got killed and the song was released nine years earlier. That is very, very interesting.

We are delighted to have Sean Ono Lennon, musician, member of the bands The Ghost, also known as The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, and the Claypool Lennon Delirium. Also founder of Chimera Music, a collaborative artist-run label and arts collective based here in New York City, and of course son of John and Yoko. Sean, thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate you coming on WNYC.

Sean: Thanks, Brian. It's good to be here. I'm excited to be on the show. I'm a big fan.

Brian: I'm delighted to hear that. Let me start with what I was just telling the audience about a lot of people still don't know that in 2017, your mom officially got added to the songwriting credits for Imagine. How did that come about? Whoops, did we lose Sean's line? There we go. Sorry.

Sean: Can you hear me?

Brian: Yes. Now, we can hear you. Our fault.

Sean: It was documented that my dad had said my mom co-wrote Imagine with him and he admitted that he was too insecure basically to share credit at the time because it was only his second solo record. He had just been wrapping up with the Beatles. He said it, that he didn't give her credit because he was too insecure. It was documented that that was a fact and I think it just was recognized later, which is nice because my mom's waited a long time, I guess, to get her due in that regard.

Brian: The song was released in '71, but I read that the word Imagine really got into your parents' writing lives from a book and conceptual art project that Yoko had released in 1964. Is that something you're familiar with?

Sean: Yes. Of course. If you look at my mom's conceptual art instructions, which most famously can be seen in the book Fruit, which is the compendium of a lot of her conceptual ideas. As a conceptual artist, she always believes that art is conceptual and you would describe a painting in a written word or you just sculpture. It was a borderline between performance art and poetry, but it was a lot of imagination exercise. I guess Imagine this and that, as a theme, came from my mother's work and her conceptual art.

Brian: Were there other songs that your mother contributed to, but didn't get credit for?

Sean: Look, I'm not going to get into that because it's not for me to say. It would be for my mother or it would've been for my dad to say. It's interesting how people decide their own songwriting credit. I wouldn't know. They lived together, they were joined at the hip and they certainly influenced each other a lot. For example, my mom produced the Imagine album, which I think a lot of people overlook because Phil Spector was there. I think, being a woman, it's easy to assume that it was just a general credit on my dad's part to get that production credit. The truth is if you look at the footage of them recording, she's making decisions, he's asking for her advice after every take.

She really did produce one of the most successful albums of all time. I don't think people recognize her as a great record producer, but she technically is. It's deniable in that case.

Brian: I'm glad we got that out. In 1971, the Vietnam War was raging, modern environmentalism and feminism were breaking out, the Beatles had recently broken up. You weren't born until four years later, but what's your best understanding of whether the song was inspired by something in particular or the multiple hugeness of the moment?

Sean: That's a big question. You could probably get a master's writing about that subject because there was a confluence of a lot of things happening in the late '60s, early '70s. Not just the Vietnam. There was a cultural revolution happening in the west and also [unintelligible 00:06:40] There's a lot of historical things that were a confluence of events that were, I'm sure, in my dad's head in everyone's radar. I think for my dad it had to do with-- I don't like speaking for him, but this is totally my personal subjective view is that I think for him, leaving Beatles and starting to work with my mom, she spoke about how his lyrical style became less flowery and less surreal and became more confessional and more [unintelligible 00:07:14]

He was very influenced by my mom, but also by haiku. He spent a lot of time in Japan and he said that haiku was his favorite form of poetry. You can see on his album Plastic Ono Band, the lyrics were very simple and super autobiographical. It was almost just very stark. I think that was a revelation for him because he was known more for I am the Walrus and those kinds of wordplay songs. I think for him, and Imagine is almost like a children's lullaby in its simplicity and it was an intention prayer. I think it's a break away from his more verbose style of lyrics in the Beatles.

Brian: Interesting. Out of the whole body of your father's work, where would you say Imagine ranks among the songs that other people most want to talk about to you?

Sean: To me personally, it's always going to take shelf to Beautiful Boy because people just like to bring that one up when they meet me.

Brian: Because it's about you?

Sean: Probably, yes. I think, like a lot of my dad's work, certain pieces transcend the box of just being a song. I feel like certain great works transcend the artist and the individual and they becomes something that's shared by the collective culture, the collective unconscious, or whatever. It's part of the ether and the fabric of modern culture to me. I think the song is almost bigger than him in a way. That's not to diminish him as a person. I think at a certain point, great works of art transcend time and space and they become intertwined of things.

Brian: Sean Ono Lennon with us for another few minutes. What are you doing musically these days? I'm curious how the pandemic has affected you as a musician because I know it's been so isolating for so many musicians who couldn't perform and at the beginning couldn't even connect with their band members in person.

Sean: I think musicians were hit in a similar way to a lot of industries that normally require people be in same room at the same time, whether it's playing a live show or being in the studio, traveling for touring. It all ended. We did cancel a couple of tours when it began, my band the Delirium. Now I'm about to start a new record for Delirium and I wound up doing a lot of work in the home. Like a lot of people, we adapted to a home version of what we needed to do. I've been producing albums, I've been producing stuff for different artists. Instead of them coming to my studio like usual, I've been doing it through Zoom and remotely.

It's a different way of working. There's the upside that you don't always have to wear pants to the office but the downside is you don't get that interpersonal physical connection. I think musicians are not alone in that. I think it's happened to a lot of people. We managed to adapt and luckily we're starting to tour again and hopefully we'll manage to do that throughout next year without having some fourth wave or whatever you call it. We're all hoping for that.

Brian: Be careful about that not wearing pants on Zoom thing. You get up to go to the kitchen, you're not thinking about it and then--

Sean: I was thinking about that poor man who was caught. I like working at home. In a way I feel spoiled because I have my studio computer here and I can just make music anyway, but I do miss the interaction. Hopefully we'll get back to normal or something like it very soon.

Brian: Looking forward to it of course. Last question, Sean, Imagine ends with the line, "You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us and the world will live as one." They're trying to coax people in some way explicitly with that lyric. At least that's what it seems like. Do you think the song actually, as it has transcended in the way that you were describing before, has actually changed anything? Do you think music ever can?

Sean: Wow. These are heavy questions man. I think that as much as a song can change things in the abstract, Imagine probably has had as much influence as a song can have really. I do think that music and art can only go so far. The infrastructure of society, the government and the banks and all of that, there's a lot of brick and mortar and steel and glass that's in place. I don't know if a song can transform everything but I think it can be a beacon of light that guides us in a good direction and makes us feel more connected. I think for me it's more about sharing common culture with our fellow humans.

If we all feel that we love the song Imagine then we're sharing an ideology that brings us closer together. I do think that that is an accomplishment. I think Imagine probably has done that as much as any piece of art ever could hope to do.

Brian: Nicely said. Sean Ono Lennon these days making music with the Claypool Lennon Delirium so nice of you to come on to acknowledge the 50th anniversary of Imagine with us. Thank you very very much.

Sean: Thank you very much. Take care.

[music]

You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one.

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