Forty-six years after John Lennon gave the world ‘Imagine’, his wife Yoko Ono, who had contributed by way of the concept and the lyrics of the song, is now being given due credit as a songwriter along with the former Beatles legend.
The National Music Publishers Association, at its annual meeting in New York on Wednesday, made the surprise announcement when Ono and her son Sean Ono Lennon came to pick up the organisation’s new prize of naming the 1971 number ‘Imagine’ as the song of the century.
At the ceremony, a BBC interview from 1980 featuring Lennon and Ono, was played in which the former Beatles star admits that Ono provided not just inspiration for the iconic song, but a lot of the lyrics too.
"A lot of it - the lyric and the concept - came from Yoko," John said in the video, according to the BBC.
"But those days I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho, and I sort of omitted to mention her contribution.
"But it was right out of Grapefruit, her book (of poetry). There's a whole pile of pieces about 'Imagine this' and 'Imagine that,'" Lennon said.
The Washington Post reported that Lennon, in a tone that suggested he was embarrassed at his earlier sexism, says in the video: “If it had been a male, you know – Harry Nilsson’s Old Dirt Road, it’s ‘Lennon-Nilsson’. But when we did [Imagine] I just put ‘Lennon’ because, you know, she’s just the wife and you don’t put her name on, right?”
More than forty years later, due credit is finally being given.
An excited Sean Ono Lennon spoke to Billboard magazine about the announcement. “When they officially acknowledged - through my father's account - that my mother co-wrote Imagine, the song of the century, it may have been the happiest day of mine and [my] mother's life," he was quoted as saying.
The addition of credit, though underway, is likely to face some opposition, said NMPA CEO David Israelite, who explained that according to US Law a song becomes devoid of copyright and enters the public domain 70 years after the death of its last creator. Adding Yoko’s name would extend that time period, during which it will continue to earn revenue for its rights holders.
Yoko, however, already has rights to Lennon’s estate, and the income distributed from royalties, therefore, will not significantly be altered, reported the BBC.
‘Imagine’ was created by John Lennon (and Yoko Ono) in 1971 after he split from the Beatles. The song topped the charts after Lennon was shot dead in 1980.