Imagine there's no "Imagine ..."

If John Lennon's "Imagine" didn't exist, Mark Steyn would have had to invent it:

Scardino’s [Broadway] staging of the number ["Imagine"] presents it as a piece of self-conscious non-staging, in tribute to its “authenticity.” “Imagine” is an amazing song: an article of faith for people who have none, it’s astonishing how deeply it’s penetrated in a mere three decades to every corner of the culture. At my daughter’s school a couple of Christmases back, it was the grand finale of the holiday concert. The music department had thoughtfully printed the lyrics on the program, and the teacher, inviting the parents to sing along, declared the number summed up what we were all “praying” for: “Imagine there’s no heaven/ It’s easy if you try/ No hell below us/ Above us only sky/ Imagine all the people/ Living for today.”

Ah, that’s the message of the season, isn’t it? Happy holidays! The next time I heard those words was when I switched on the TV a few months later and saw a half-Jewish/half-Muslim choir backing Bill Clinton, who was up on stage crooning them down the cleavage of some hot Zionist babe as the top-of-the-bill lounge act at Shimon Peres’ birthday party. I am not making this up. I wish I were. But I doubt any “creative writer” would ever create such a scene: Too implausible—or rather, all too plausible but too obviously tacky. Yet it happened. And there’s more imagination in President Clinton’s staging of the song than anything in Lennon. In fact, in its own way, the mesmeric garishness of the Islamo-Zionist “Imagine” is a greater tribute to its composer than anything in this lamely predictable biotuner.

Doesn’t a show about Lennon owe us more than just the droning vamp and the company stepping forward to intone the sacred text? Shouldn’t it at least give us an “and then I wrote” moment? Wouldn’t it be productive to explore the song’s meaning as Lennon saw it and his own ambivalence toward the sentiments? You may say he’s a dreamer, but he’s not—whatever the moonily devoted young company sleepwalking downstage may think. I mentioned a couple of years ago the flurry of stories about how Lennon was a very generous contributor not just to organizations that support and fund the IRA, but to the IRA itself. He could imagine there’s no countries and nothing to kill or die for, but until that blessed day he was happy to chip in his tuppence-ha’penny to support an organization willing to blow the legs off grannies in shopping centers. Lennon grew rich peddling fluffy multiculti pap to the masses, but he didn’t fall for it himself.

Registration is required to read this whole piece (a review of Broadway's new Lennon bio). It's very quick, though, and you won't be disappointed. Steyn suggests, among other things, that -- despite the hagiographical impulses of the music "critics" -- it's McCartney's music that will last, not Lennon's. Steyn's piece also reminds me that talented people like Lennon are rarely as vapid as their latter-day disciples make them seem.

(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll)