Imagine is the second solo studio album by the English musician John Lennon, released on 9 September 1971 by Apple Records. Co-produced by Lennon, his wife Yoko Ono and Phil Spector, the album's elaborate sound contrasts the basic, small-group arrangements of his first album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970). The opening title track is widely considered to be his signature song.
Lennon recorded the album from early to mid-1971 at his Ascot Sound Studios, EMI Recording Studios and the Record Plant in New York City, with musicians that included his ex-Beatles bandmate George Harrison, keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, bassist Klaus Voormann and drummers Alan White and Jim Keltner. The lyrics reflect peace, love, politics, Lennon's experience with primal scream therapy and, following a period of high personal tensions, an attack on his former writing partner Paul McCartney in "How Do You Sleep?". Extensive footage from the sessions was recorded for a scrapped documentary; parts were released on the documentary film Imagine: John Lennon (1988). The documentary John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky, based on that footage, was released in 2018.
Imagine was a critical and commercial success, reaching number one on both the UK Albums Chart and US Billboard 200. Along with John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, it is considered one of Lennon's finest solo albums. In 2012, it was voted 80th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album has been reissued several times, including in 2018 as The Ultimate Collection, a six-disc box set containing previously unreleased demos, studio outtakes, "evolution documentaries" for each track, and isolated track elements along with surround mixes.
Background
While in New York, former Beatles John Lennon and George Harrison had a short jam session, during which Lennon asked Harrison to perform on Lennon's next album. Recording was scheduled to begin in a week's time at Lennon's Ascot Sound Studios, at his Tittenhurst Park residence. A cover of the Olympics' 1958 song "Well (Baby Please Don't Go)", later released on John Lennon Anthology, was recorded on 16 February. Lennon chose to remake "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier" on 24 May 1971, Lennon showed the musicians a song that he had recently written, "Imagine".
Extensive footage of the sessions, showing the evolution of some of the songs, was originally filmed and titled Working Class Hero before being shelved. following the Beatles' break-up the year before and McCartney winning his case in the High Court to have their legal partnership dissolved. Lennon said in 1980: "I used my resentment against Paul ... to create a song ... not a terrible vicious horrible vendetta ... I used my resentment and withdrawing from Paul and The Beatles, and the relationship with Paul, to write 'How Do You Sleep?'. I don't really go 'round with those thoughts in my head all the time ..."
The track "Imagine" became Lennon's signature song and was written as a plea for world peace. Years later he acknowledged Ono's role in the song's creation and stated his regret that he had not credited her as a co-writer. "Jealous Guy" has also had enduring popularity; it was originally composed as "Child of Nature" during the songwriting sessions in India in 1968 that led to the Beatles' double album The Beatles. "Oh My Love" and the song "How?" were influenced by his experience with primal therapy.
Lennon also indulged his love of rock and roll with "Crippled Inside" and "It's So Hard". "Gimme Some Truth", first heard during the Let It Be sessions in early 1969, appears on the album with a new bridge. The politically themed "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier" closes the first half of Imagine in a cacophonous manner. The last song on the album was "Oh Yoko!"; EMI pushed for this track to be issued as a single, but Lennon thought it was too "pop".
Packaging
The photographs on the front and back covers were taken by Ono, using a Polaroid camera. It was previously believed that the front cover photo was taken by Andy Warhol. The back cover includes a quote ("Imagine the clouds dripping. Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.") from Ono's book Grapefruit, which UK re-release the Lennons were promoting at the time. The album's original release also included a poster of Lennon at the piano and two postcards. In lieu of sporting the typical full green apple picture on most Apple record labels, a black and white photograph of Lennon's face was presented on Side A instead.
Release
thumb|upright=0.65|1971 [[Billboard (magazine)|Billboard ad for the album]]
Apple Records issued Imagine on 9 September 1971 in the United States and a month later, on 8 October, in the UK. Early editions of the LP record included a postcard featuring a photo of Lennon holding a pig, in mockery of McCartney's similar pose with a sheep on the cover of Ram.
Even though Spector championed a "Back to Mono" aesthetic starting in the 1980s, monophonic sound was out of style in the 1970s. Instead, the album was released in stereo and in the then new four channel quadraphonic technology. In the US, the four channel mix was only available on a quad 8-track tape with some copies marketed as "Quadrasonic". In the UK and Australia, the quad mix was issued on LP record using CBS's SQ matrix system along with a quad 8-track version in the UK. In Japan, the quad mix was issued on LP using the QS Regular Matrix system; and also, a discrete quad reel-to-reel tape.
"Imagine", backed with "It's So Hard", was released as a single in the US on 11 October 1971.
Promotional film
In 1972, Lennon and Ono released a 70-minute film to accompany the Imagine album which featured footage of them at their Berkshire property at Tittenhurst Park and in New York City. It included many of the tracks from the album and some additional material from Ono's 1971 album Fly.
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Reviewing the album for Rolling Stone in 1971, Ben Gerson said it "contains a substantial portion of good music" but considered Lennon's previous LP to be superior. He also warned of the possibility that Lennon's "posturings will soon seem not merely dull but irrelevant". Alan Smith of the NME lauded the album as "superb", "beautiful" and "one step away from the chill of his recent total self-revelation, and yet a giant leap towards commerciality without compromise". He said it was Lennon "showing McCartney how to tighten up the flab in his music, and its worth", and concluded: "Lennon rides high!" In Melody Maker, Roy Hollingworth named Imagine the best album of the year and Lennon's finest work up to that point.
Imagine was voted the fifth best record of 1971 in The Village Voices Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics nationwide. It was voted "Album of the Year" in polls conducted by Radio Luxembourg and Record World.
Robert Christgau, who ranked it fifth in his Pazz & Jop ballot, appraised the album as "primal goes pop – personal and useful" in the 1981 book Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies. Writing for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine finds the lyrics to be "only marginally less confessional" than on Lennon's previous album, adding: "If Imagine doesn't have the thematic sweep of Plastic Ono Band, it is nevertheless a remarkable collection of songs that Lennon would never be able to better again." It dropped to number 223 in the 2020 edition of the list.
Legacy
Lennon later expressed his displeasure with the more commercial sound of the album, saying that the title track was "an anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic song, but because it's sugar-coated, it's accepted". In a November 1971 interview for Melody Maker, McCartney spoke positively of Imagine, considering it to be less political than Lennon's previous solo albums. In a subsequent edition of the same publication, Lennon rebuked his former bandmate, saying, "So you think 'Imagine' ain't political? It's 'Working Class Hero' with sugar on it for conservatives like yourself!!" and likened McCartney's politics to those of the staunchly traditional Mary Whitehouse.
After Lennon's death, Imagine, along with seven other Lennon albums, was reissued by EMI as part of a box set, which was released in the UK on 15 June 1981.