Why Do We Always Turn to John Lennon’s “Imagine” After a Violent Tragedy?
When disaster strikes, musicians respond the way they know best: with song. As composer Leonard Bernstein said three days after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” And as the dust of a violent tragedy settles, you’re likely to hear one tune in particular: the contemplative strains of John Lennon’s 1971 “Imagine,” which reached number three in the UK when it was first released and sailed to number one after Lennon’s murder in 1980. On Saturday, Coldplay opened their L.A. concert with “Imagine” in tribute to the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris. (The band had planned to unveil new material from their upcoming album, but ended up performing an acoustic set of older songs out of respect.) That same night, a man lugged his grand piano to the street outside the Bataclan—the site of the deadliest shootings—and delivered an instrumental version of Lennon’s hit to quiet applause and the flash of iPhone cameras.
These latest covers extend a long tradition of reaching for “Imagine” in the wake of terrible world events. The ritual arguably began on December 9, 1980, when Queen covered the song at the Wembley Arena, one day after Lennon died. Stevie Wonder played it during the closing ceremony of the 1996 Summer Olympics to honor lives lost in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. Neil Young brought it out for the 9/11 Tribute to Heroes concert. (Curiously, the song also appeared on the Clear Channel memorandum, a list of “lyrically questionable” titles that radio stations were discouraged from playing after the planes struck the towers.) In 2004, Madonna joined the ranks of “Imagine”-eers when she reinterpreted Lennon’s ballad at an aid concert for victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami.
By: Katy Waldman
Source: Slate
