Yoko Ono is finally receiving the credit she deserves for her part in writing Imagine. As announced by members of the National Music Publishers Association on Wednesday.
The announcement was made during a ceremony celebrating the iconic song, wrote by her late husband John Lennon.
Imagine John Lennon writing ‘Imagine’ without Yoko Ono
At the annual meeting of the National Music Publishers Association in New York on Wednesday, Yoko and Sean Ono Lennon received the organization’s new Centennial Song award for John Lennon’s iconic 1971 song ‘Imagine’
Yoko received more. NMPA CEO David Israelite announced that in accordance with Lennon’s wish, Yoko will be added to the song as a co-writer.
This comes 46 years after the hit smashed records and became a legendary song.
Israelite noted that there may be some opposition to the move at some point along the way as adding Yoko will significantly extend the number of years that the song will generate income for its writers.
However, he said that the NMPA and Downtown Music Publishing, which administers both Ono’s and Lennon’s solo compositions, are hopeful that it will be confirmed.
Because Ono is a beneficiary of Lennon’s estate, the move is not complicated financially. However, virtually everything involving The Beatles and the vast fortune they generated has many ramifications, so more legal maneuvering is likely in the months and years to come.
At the ceremony, Yoko took the stage to accept the award and shared some words. “This is the best time of my life.” She continued, “And I am so surprised that Sean created his own vision —”
Then Sean gently took the microphone and said, charmingly, “Let’s not talk about me!” to laughter.
He spoke briefly about the importance of music education in schools, and how much his father learned at art college. “So let’s not let any generation be denied the opportunity of letting those parts of their imaginations [thrive].”
A rendition of the song was then played by Patti Smith and her daughter in the piano.
Poetic influence and more
The process to credit Ono on John Lennon’s 1971 hit begun, decades after he acknowledged her poetic influence on it.
In a BBC interview with the couple in 1980, Lennon explained that his failure to credit Ono was due to his being “macho”.
He said, “[Imagine] should be credited as a Lennon-Ono song because of a lot of it – the lyric and the concept – came from Yoko. But those days I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho. I sort of omitted to mention her contribution.”
He went on in a tone that suggests he was embarrassed at his earlier sexism, he says: “If it had been a male, you know – Harry Nilsson’s Old Dirt Road, it’s ‘Lennon-Nilsson’. But when we did [Imagine] I just put ‘Lennon’ because, you know, she’s just the wife and you don’t put her name on, right?”
Lennon went on record several times saying Ono deserved co-writing credits for the song. It was inspired by her poetry collection titled ‘Grapefruit.’
The song was recorded in 1971 and co-produced by Lennon, Ono and Phil Spector.
With its lyrics musing on a society without religious, national or ethnic barriers or dedication to material pursuits, the song has been cited as one of the most frequently performed and recorded songs in pop music history.
‘Imagine’, for many people, is the definitive song of Lennon’s post-Beatles career; it reached number one in the UK charts after his murder in 1980. Lenon was shot and killed outside his New York City apartment building in 1980.
Leaving behind the blame on disbanding The Beatles
Though the move to credit Ono on ‘Imagine’ may stick in the craw of those who still cling to the idea that the artist was the reason The Beatles disbanded, Paul McCartney has long been on the record as dispelling those rumors.
“She certainly didn’t break the group up, the group was breaking up,” he said in a 2012 interview with David Frost.
McCartney added that without Ono, later Lennon songs like ‘Imagine’ may never have existed.
“I don’t think he would have done that without Yoko,” he said, “so I don’t think you can blame her for anything.”
Last May The Beatles Sgt. Pepper turned 50 years, and Paul McCartney revealed the album’s origin. In a lengthy interview with his own website, McCartney offered details on the classic album.
“I was coming back from a trip abroad with our roadie, Mal Evans, just the two of us together on the plane. we were eating and he mumbled to me, asked me to pass the salt and pepper. And I misheard him,” McCartney explained.
“I thought he said, Sergeant Pepper. I went, ‘Oh! Wait a minute, that’s a great idea!’ So we had a laugh about it, then I started thinking about Sergeant Pepper as a character. I thought it would be a very interesting idea for us to assume alter egos for this album we were about to make.”
A special 50th anniversary remixed edition of the iconic album is available on CD, streaming, and vinyl.
Source: CBS News