Is it just me or is there a painful inevitability about 'Imagine' being re-issued and then being branded 'classic' at every turn? Being a dead ex-Beatle helps, as does the undoubted and enduring qulaity of the title track, but there are too many average moments on this 1971 offering to brand it as a landmark.
True, Lennon's solo career was always a mixture of highs mixed with some cringing lows, and at least 'Imagine' manages to keep Yoko off of the multi-track - if not out of the studio. How Phil Spector must have laughed to see her co-production credit - not!
So what we have here is a collection of songs, seven of which Lennon has admitted he 'polished off' from the remnants in his bottom draw, to join three songs written specifically for the album. The resulting lack of continuity in writing style and sound denies 'Imagine' the chance of matching the force, say of McCartney's 'Band On The Run'.
Instead we have a disparate collection of songs with some bizarrely different production - compare 'Imagine''s own woolly piano reverb with the country-pop skip of the jolly 'Oh Yoko'. They sound a million miles apart (three years is nearer the mark).
'Crippled Inside''s C&W twang, the agit-rock of 'I Don't Wanna Be A Solider Mama' at least fulfill Lennon's 'spokesman...' brief, but even he must have regreted committing the attack on his former songwriting pal that is 'How Do You Sleep?' in which Paul is slated for his looks, his music, his success, his wife'...you want more? Amusing and baffling then, that 'How' which follows the anti-Paul rave, is as McCartneyesque in its gentle piano arrangement as Lennon would ever get.
'Jealous Guy' is a as good a song as Bryan Ferry's version suggested and 'Oh My Love' is a beautiful, simple love song, while 'It's So Hard' is the kind of twelve-bar twaddle that made up the arse end of 'Let It Be'.
Not a 'classic' then, but an album with a few great songs and some very average ones too. A stack of old film footage and the passing of time doesn't make it any more special than the music allows.
