After the breakup of the Beatles, each member went to their own corner. All four were probably thinking the same things, contemplating how their life had just changed and how their music had just changed, wondering how it could look and sound now. For John Lennon, it sounded like freedom.
Or at least, that’s how Lennon seemed to like to frame it. As one of the most eager members to part ways, he was already one foot out of the door by the time the band finally and officially called it quits. He was already planning his life after with a move to New York on the cards and new projects already underway with his wife, Yoko Ono.
It was clear that he didn’t want to be John Lennon from The Beatles anymore. He just wanted to be John Lennon, or maybe just John, as in John and Yoko. Either way, he wanted it to be more about him. He wanted it to be more personal.
In his eyes, that was the main thing. While The Beatles had been personal in moments, as several of the songs he penned for the band were poignantly specific to his life, like ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ or ‘Nowhere Man’, he’s always seen a kind of block. At the end of the day, The Beatles were a pop band.
Even as they experimented more and more, there was pressure to sell records and be, to a degree, commercial, and so the songs needed to be somewhat relatable. Not only would that foster an environment where Lennon might not feel like he was allowed to go all in on his own life, it also probably didn’t make him want to, especially as the relationships between members began to splinter too.
But by 1971, it was all said and done. The band was through, he’d released his first somewhat solo record, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, backed up by Ono and their new band, and now, he was truly settling into things with Imagine – a record he saw as his truest work.
“I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” Lennon said straight up to Rolling Stone in 1971, a few months after the album came out. But it wasn’t about the musical quality. Instead, Lennon’s love for Imagine came down to the man it reflected as he added, “I think it’s realistic and it’s true to the me that has been developing over the years from my life.”
The personal nature of Imagine, including tracks like ‘Oh Yoko’ or the hyper-specific diss-track ‘How Do You Sleep?’, also counters exactly what had become his issue in The Beatles and with Paul McCartney.
“I always wrote about me when I could. I didn’t really enjoy writing third-person songs about people who lived in concrete flats and things like that. I like first-person music,” he said, seemingly putting down his bandmate’s storytelling songs.
He was free now, though, and with that freedom, he wanted to talk about himself as he concluded, “Now I wrote all about me, and that’s why I like it. It’s me! And nobody else. That’s why I like it. It’s real, that’s all.”