Remembering Marx and Lennon : The Former Beatle at 50: Imagine

Happy birthday, John.

Imagine: 50 today.

But it’s even more amazing when you realize it’s been 10 years since that night outside the Dakota.

I don’t know how much news you’re getting these days, but I hope you know that we are still thinking of you.

Yoko has arranged for radio stations all over the world to play “Imagine” at 7 a.m. today (Pacific time). The idea is for everyone to turn up the volume and open the windows--so that people can walk down the streets of almost any city and all hear the song at the same time.

Whoever thought that “Imagine” would end up as the record most identified with you? Remember how a lot of people at first called it innocent and naive?

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do.

Nothing to kill or die for.

No religion too.

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace.

But peace and love weren’t just some sort of utopian fantasy to you. They are concrete alternatives if individuals would only realize that they have the power to change history. That’s what songs like “All You Need Is Love” and “Give Peace a Chance” and “Power to the People” were all about.

“Imagine” was a good choice for the radio today because the world actually does seem a bit closer at the moment.

Have you heard about Mikhail Gorbachev and the reforms in the Soviet Union? There are also new, democratic governments throughout Eastern Europe. Even the Berlin Wall has come down. Germany just held a reunification election.

But there is tension in the Persian Gulf, where Iraq has seized Kuwait. The United States has sent thousands of troops to the area, and there is fear of war.

Yet “Imagine” was never just about countries, it was about people caring for each other and that ideal, John, seems no closer than it was when you wrote the song in 1971. People have come together to battle against those who would despoil the environment and to help find a cure for a deadly disease called AIDS.

At the same time, there appears to be a widening of the division between socioeconomic groups around the world.

You’d be heartbroken by the homelessness in this country. I don’t recall how bad it was 10 years ago, but now thousands of people in our biggest cities spend the night in doorways and alleys, sometimes with just cardboard boxes as shelter in the winter.

And that’s only one sign of the deterioration in the quality of life. New York City, which you loved, has gone so bad with violence and drugs that Time magazine recently ran a cover story on how the Big Apple has turned into the rotting apple.

The No. 1 single this week, ironically, is a song called “Praying for Time.” It’s a thoughtful ballad--by a young British songwriter named George Michael--that echoes a widespread pessimism in the world today.

The song includes the lines:

And it’s hard to love, there’s so much hate

Hanging on to hope

When there is no hope to speak of .

And the wounded skies above

Say it’s much too late

So maybe we should all be praying for time.

Most of pop music today, however, ignores social issues. It’s just hollow, recycled stuff that is no more relevant or stirring than most of the music that dominated the charts before you and Dylan helped show us that pop could be an art form--a way to explore our deepest desires and fears, and to reflect on social needs.

You can still find much good music in the stores. Certainly some of the new rap artists . . . and a young Irish singer-songwriter named Sinead O’Connor, who is something of a spitfire like you.

She refused to let the arena staff play “The Star Spangled Banner” before one of her concerts a few months ago, and there was all kinds of uproar even though she explained that she wasn’t trying to insult America--she’s even living here now.

O’Connor just didn’t want politics of any kind imposed on her shows. It reminded me of the fuss the time you said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, and people thought you were saying that the Beatles were more important than Jesus.

You’d also be cheered by the work of other artists who speak about life and the times with the integrity and intensity that you brought to your best music--people like Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley and Neil Young, whom you remember from the ‘70s--and such relative newcomers as Prince, Sting, Public Enemy and U2.

The most stirring example of rock as a positive force was when dozens of artists got together in London in 1985 to stage a Live Aid concert that was telecast around the world and raised millions of dollars for famine victims in Ethiopia. Elton John was there . . . and Pete Townshend . . . and Paul McCartney. Who knows--that may have been the day you two finally got back together on stage.

The irony is that even with all this positive energy in pop there is a campaign in the country against the music. A U.S. District Court judge in Florida declared an album by a Miami rap group obscene, and parent groups have pressured record companies so aggressively that they now put warning stickers on albums that might contain “offensive” material.

There’s a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame now, and the Beatles were inducted as soon as they were eligible, of course. I guess you also know there have been books about you (most of them pretty exploitative), some statutes, a Grammy Award (for “Double Fantasy”) and a strip of Central Park near the Dakota renamed Strawberry Fields in your honor.

But you never did put much stock in awards--and I’m sure the thing that pleases you most is simply the way the music and spirit survives in the work of all the artists who seek to inspire and illuminate.

Young record makers, some even younger than Julian, continue to mention you when they talk about why they wanted to be in a band--and the best of them reflect your independence and spunk in their songs. All your albums continue to be available, and there is a new, four-set volume coming out later this month that brings together your music from both the Beatles and solo years.

I just wish the stations had the time today to play some of your other songs, because it’s wrong to think of you as just the serious, philosophical guy who wrote “Imagine.”

I’d love to hear the energy of “A Hard Day’s Night” or the tenderness of “In My Life” or the humor of “The Ballad of John and Yoko” or the beauty of “Across the Universe.”

Most of all, John, I wish we could hear a new song from you on the radio; something that would help us put the world into better perspective again--maybe a song about the Berlin Wall or the homeless situation--or maybe just another great rock ‘n’ roll tune to cheer us.

But then if you were here, choosing the records to be played at your 50th birthday party, you probably wouldn’t play your records at all.

You’d turn to the old Elvis records that you had on the jukebox at the Dakota. And I bet you still love them as much as you did all those years ago in Liverpool, when you first dreamed of being in a band.

Thanks for everything--and have fun at your own party today. P.S. Say hello to Elvis.