Posted on 01/28/2023 11:27:55 AM PST by nickcarraway
“I still believe that love is all you need,” Paul McCartney continues to proclaim, “I don’t know a better message than that.” And yet John Lennon took that love-uber-alles ethos to such an extreme in the 1970s that even his old rose-tinted mate was retorting, “Too many people preaching practices.” So it’s no surprise that the sardonic duo in Steely Dan rolled their eyes when they heard the ‘Smart One’s’ prayer for peace with ‘Imagine’ and a string of pious talk show appearances in the early 1970s.
Steely Dan’s bold response to Lennon’s all-white evangelism signified that the prominent days of the ‘Fab Four’ were waning. They may well have reached such a lofty height that they were steadfast to transcend society forevermore like counterculture Christs, but the age of atheism was now dawning, so to speak. How could it not?
The problem that The Beatles faced was the same one that all religions must reckon with, at one point faith surely has to sort this shitshow out. Try as ‘Imagine’ might, Lennon’s attempt to set the world to rights didn’t do much. It was becoming clear that love would only get you so far, but you’re going to need a whole lot more. At least creeds have promised eternities to deal with that quandary, The Beatles did not—they had a break-up and questionable dualities.
In 1971, Lennon appeared on The Dick Cavett Show alongside Yoko Ono. In an army overshirt, he spoke of peace and love. Outside the Regis Hotel where it was filmed, things were falling apart in a rainy New York City. Between 1969 to 1974 the former bohemian utopia lost 500,000 manufacturing jobs. Subsequently, a million homes depended on welfare, rapes and burglaries tripled, drugs ran rampant, and murders hit a high of 1690 a year.
In a wider sense, the American war offensive in Vietnam intensified. Charles Manson’s sentencing relived the horrors in the headlines. The post-war income gains began to drift from the median in favour of the 95th percentile for the first time. Jim Morrison’s excesses caught up with him. And the children of the revolution were faced with reconciling the fact that loads of lovely songs had, in fact, failed to stop a string of assassinations and other atrocities.
It is, of course, easy cynicism to scoff at Lennon’s pledge for a pristine paradise of borderless dreams, but that’s an open goal that Steely Dan and millions of others were happy to score in. It was their considered opinion that even having your heart in the right place can be a folly if you’ve failed to read the room. While Lennon would argue that he was promoting hope and some much-needed spiritualism to act as a beacon in these dark times, Steely Dan opined that “only a fool would say that”.
Their 1972 track, ‘Only a Fool Would Say That’ was written in response to Lennon’s parade of peace. It looks at idealism through the practical eyes of folks on the street. “You do his nine to five,” they sing, “drag yourself home half alive, and there on the screen, a man with a dream.” And with that, you get a sense of how grating and vacuous they thought that Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ campaign had become.
However, importantly, it wasn’t just the man on the street who identified with this tone. It was the kids coming through wondering what their place in the world would be. You see, it’s a reality that we’re still getting nostalgic over and no doubt will do forevermore: the 1960s were a cultural zenith akin to the great renaissance period confined to about seven short years from Bob Dylan’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in 1963 to Woodstock in 1969. These might seem arbitrary, but that’s the legacy of culture—these things require an arc. Given that the height of the first renaissance was about 465 years earlier, it was dawning that it might take some time before things reach the frenzied heights of the Summer of Love again.
By the time Steely Dan began pointing their fingers at misplaced idealism in the fallout from that prelapsarian slide of flowery dreams to the nitty-gritty side of realism, a new cultural outlook was seeding. The kids searching for their own identity out in this grim new dystopia and a sort of cynical academic approach seemed like the answer. Their parents had come of age in the days of ‘White Rabbit’ but now they were spending their old hashish money on white goods, accepting the fruits of capitalism and the home comforts of commerciality.
This was asserted by one of the flower power eras’ most beloved stars no less. “You watched that high of the hippie thing descend into drug depression,” she said. “Right after Woodstock, then we went through a decade of basic apathy where my generation sucked its thumb and then just decided to be greedy and pornographic.” Once more, it must be said that this is awful harsh and cynical, but that was the angle being drummed up and it was an easy tune to march to.
It was as though the 1960s had been hoisted by their own petard, faced with the turn-coat tag of converting to reality or the oblivion of endless idealism. Lennon chose the latter, but sadly he didn’t give up quite enough possessions or clean up his pitfalls enough to be canonised a saint, and this made him a target for the likes of Steely Dan and Frank Zappa who criticised his preaching. Their comical satire was more akin to the disdainful ways of Kurt Vonnegut than any conventional philosophers. The didactic ways of Lennon were often the punchline to their acerbic idealism-defying opinions.
Gilmour was the one who made sure Syd Barrett was well taken care of.
The other thing is that Waters treated Rick Wright like crap. And some of my favorite early PF songs are Wright’s songs like “Paintbox”.
Kind of a dopey, straw-man article. Makes it sound like because Lennon wrote that retarded song in 1971, he was some kind of evangelist for that “Imagine” spirit the rest of his life. Not really. “Imagine no possessions”? Given that Yoko’s net worth is probably $600MM+, John didn’t “imagine” that one very long or very hard.
And that was only #1 because it was a duet with Elton John, who was the biggest star at that time.
Depends on whether or not it is understood in the sense of Transcendental Meditation. As I understand it, and please correct me anyone, if you get enough people to "visualize" something especially simultaneously, then some mystical power makes it happen.
Only a fool would say that.
John Lennon was a jerk and I never liked him.
All of his solo music sucked to.
Imagine.....🤢
Same here. I like them both, but Steely Dan much better.
Perhaps in my age I’m forgetting some of Gilmours jewels without Roger - There’s No Way out of Here; Murder; Learning to Fly.
I experienced “There’s No Way out of Here” for the first time on hell night when I was a fraternity pledge. That and In a Godda Da Vida. Good times 40 years ago.
What a fool believes.
Excuse me while I go barf now as Yoko is a triple bag woofer.
I could watch Zappa’s interviews all day, even if there were some things I disagreed with him about.
A just machine
To make big decisions
Programmed by fellas
With compassion and vision
In a nutshell, exactly what the Deep State wants.
Maybe so, but there’s no denying that many of the great rock stars of that era acknowledge that the guitar solo on Reeling in the Years was possibly one of the greatest of the times. And there were a number of other great solos in their songs of that period.
He meant “Imagine YOU have no possessions”
IGY was all about the predictions for 1976, “well by ‘76, we’ll be A-OK!”
Well he moved away from the UK, because he “imagined no taxes”.
It beats the Hell out of Tubular Bells.
For those who don’t know, they play music in the room where the pledges are awaiting Initiation so they don’t hear what is going on.
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