Imagine: John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band

The Beatles had been together for around a decade when they officially split up in April 1970. As the band that defined the 1960s, their demise was seen as almost catastrophic by their legion of fans around the world.

After the Beatles' bubble burst, guitarist, singer and songwriter Lennon was still only 29 years old. He began to find his own voice as a solo artist, away from the world's biggest rock and pop group.

For many years, the fans blamed Lennon's girlfriend and future wife, Yoko Ono, for the Beatles' demise. He had first met her in 1966, at her art exhibition in London, marking the start of their famous romance that continued until his death on 8th December 1980.

Lennon was still married to his first wife Cynthia at the time, but this ended in divorce in November 1968, after she returned from a holiday in Greece to find Yoko at their marital home. John married Yoko at a Gibraltar registry office in 1969.

Although Lennon was still officially a member of the Beatles, he and Yoko recorded several tracks together, including the famous Give Peace a Chance in 1969, as part of their protest against the Vietnam War.

McCartney, however, said Yoko wasn't to blame for the Beatles' demise. In an interview in 2013, he said rumours had continued for years that she had caused the break-up, but this wasn't the case. According to McCartney, Lennon himself had grown tired of the band's "unhealthy rivalry" and wanted to go solo.

Creative energy

Filled with experimental music and innovation, Lennon was full of creative energy and was passionate about the albums he and Yoko subsequently made. In July 1970, he and Yoko were in Los Angeles undergoing their "primal therapy" sessions with American psychotherapist Dr Arthur Janov.

They returned home on 24th September 1970 and two days later were back at Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles had made many recordings. This time, they were there to record Lennon's own songs, which had been written in both England and California.

Joining them at the studio were Ringo Starr on drums, keyboard player Billy Preston and Kloos Voormann on bass guitar. Voormann was an old friend from the Beatles' time in Hamburg and Preston had worked on Let It Be. Phil Spector also joined them, playing the piano on some tracks and co-producing the album, Imagine.

Songs from the soul

In an interview, Yoko later described the resulting John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band collaboration as a "strip down of John's soul". The album took four weeks to record, with part of the recording taking place at Abbey Road and the remainder at Ascot Sound Studios - their own recording studio at Tittenhurst Park.

The songs were totally different from the music Lennon had been producing with the Beatles. Having said that, the single, Imagine, recorded for the album by John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band, had been written by Lennon and McCartney, after the Beatles' break-up. McCartney had since won a High Court battle to dissolve their legal partnership.

Although it featured Lennon's distinctive voice, there was little else to link it to the music of the Fab Four and it was a more personal lament by Lennon, which became an anthem over the years. It's essentially a peace song, in which the narrator asks the people listening to imagine a world with no barriers of race, religion or material possessions to separate us.



Awe-inspiring

It has been described by the music press as "one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring songs ever written", as he asks people to "imagine there's no countries" and "nothing to kill or die for", adding, "Imagine all the people, living life in peace."

After the song's success, Yoko, who was there when it was written, said John had never thought of it as a potential anthem. She told interviewers, "Imagine was just what John believed - we're all one country, one world, one people."

It was released in 1971, at the time of the Vietnam War, peaking at number three on the US Billboard singles chart and reaching number one in many countries all over the world. A poll in the Observer newspaper in 2001 named it as the greatest number one single in history.

Never-ending love

The love between Lennon and Yoko was reflected not only in the music, but in the cover artwork of their recordings and in the video for Imagine.

Critics said the stripped-down sound of the Plastic Ono Band was the perfect music for John’s very personal songs and outpourings.

Lennon later said Yoko had taught him the real meaning of success - not the mega-stardom he had achieved with the Beatles, but the success of his relationship with her and their son, Sean Ono Lennon, born on 9th October 1975. She had taught him to be happy when he woke up and to celebrate his relationship with the world.

One critique advised fans to listen to Imagine in a room on their own, where they could play it loud, to fully appreciate that it was on a different level from most other records and to capture the feeling you were in the room with Lennon and the other musicians.

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