John Lennon wrote many all-time great pieces of music but one of his biggest fans, Elvis Costello, believes one song is unforgivable. The Pump It Up hitmaker made it clear that he believed Lennon had bitten off more than he could chew with a track featured on his solo album, Imagine. Costello, a longtime fan of The Beatles who went on to work with Paul McCartney in the late 1980s, suggested that Lennon’s title track was abysmal given the context of what he was trying to comment on.
Part of the problem surrounding Imagine may be out of Lennon’s hands, too. Costello argued that the track had become “sanctified” by fans who had given the song too much meaning over the years. He said: “John Lennon wrote some wonderful songs, but Imagine, which has been so sanctified, was one of his worst. He didn’t think it all the way through.”
Despite his dislike of Imagine the song, the album of the same name made it onto Costello’s Top 500 of all-time great albums. His praise for The Beatles member may come as no surprise, though his criticism of Lennon may be a surprise. Costello pulled no punches from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. His song criticising Lennon, as well as Roger Waters and David Bowie, featured on his Mighty Like a Rose album. It released just two years after his songwriting collaborations with McCartney on 1989’s Flowers in the Dirt.
That same year, Costello would hit out at at-the-time Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on a song titled Tramp Down the Dirt. Costello would continue to perform the song after Thatcher’s death in 2013. He defended the decision to do so, telling The Independent at the time: “I felt I wanted to revisit the song regardless of the offence it gives to people who deify her. We sing the song from our point of view and other people have another view. Nobody shot anybody because of it. I don’t feel vindicated. I didn’t personally kill her.”
He didn’t personally kill Lennon either and has maintained his stance on Imagine long after its release. The Other Side of Summer, a song featured on Mighty Like a Rose, hit out at Lennon’s materialism and the idea of no possessions. Costello wrote: “Was it a millionaire who said ‘imagine no possessions?’ / A poor little schoolboy who said ‘we don’t need no lessons?'”
Despite the song hitting out at Lennon’s Imagine, Costello made it clear at the time of its release that he in no way meant it as a comment on the artist himself, just the song. He added it was “not a slap at John Lennon” and that he designed the song to feel reminiscent of The Beach Boys’ style.
He added that The Other Side of Summer is “obviously designed to be as much like a Californian summer record as possible, but you listen to what’s going on in the song and it’s contradictory of that. It’s like playing and writing what people do sometimes rather crudely with samplers.”
Costello has performed The Other Side of Summer intermittently since 2002, last performing it with The Imposters in 2016.
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