Politics and music don’t really mix very well as history has shown us time and time again.
I guess this is hardly surprising when you look at the average age of the typically radical musician. The older ones tend to know better than isolate half of their potential audience and tend to keep their views to themselves.
Growing up with the Beatles I was spared the political rhetoric that Lennon began to indulge in once he’d become infected by the dangerous, seemingly radical Ono malady.
His album Sometime in New York City particularly ruffled a few critical feathers (though no doubt it would be far better received today so much have things have seemingly changed).
Nevertheless I tended to side with my (possibly working class) hero.
At least I did until I grew up a little and began to form my own opinions.
By that time the seeming contradictions of Lennon singing ’Imagine no possessions’ whilst his viciously entrepreneurial champagne socialist wife was busy amassing a considerable fortune at his expense became less troublesome to me.
Lennon after all was still a young man himself and he was merely expressing an ideal - an ideal that was obviously beyond him also.
Imagine still remains a great song, and it still also remains an unobtainable ideal.
