Side 1: "Imagine all the people living life in peace"
Side 2: "Those freaks was right when they said you was dead"
I’ve never noticed how much this sounds like a bar from a rap diss before
I like to think John would've enjoyed hip hop if he had lived long enough to see it grow.
gimmie some truth sounds like a rap song too lol
Lennon was heavily influenced by Dylan (especially his early song You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away).
Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues is more like a rap precursor and just wonderful word play. A college freshman roommate of mine wrote a paper analyzing it in 1971 and I told him it was a stupid idea.
In perspective , The Weatherman radical left wing group took their name from “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” (I guess they thought it was a political metaphor which it wasn’t).
Another great rap like song was Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream (has some very funny lines)
Dylan was once asked in the 60’s if he was a political protest singer and he said “I’m just and song and dance man”. Time has shown this is mostly true.
There seems to be no limit to how influential the Beatles were
I was thinking about that recently too. Makes me wonder if those were the first mass-market diss tracks.
There is “You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog” and Rufus Thomas’ “Bearcat” but I don’t know if it was meant in the same vein as a modern diss record.
John really didn't like criticism
He loved dishing it though.
Yeah, like most things he could dish it, but never take it.
Did Paul even criticism him? I know he had in the past, but, I believe, this was in response to "Silly Love Songs", which was Paul's response to John's criticism of Paul's songs. John went medieval.
Too Many People it is in response to
Silly love songs was 5 years later. This came out after Ram, and was more of a response to “Too Many People,” which had been critical of John. John also felt like Dear Boy was aimed at him, although Paul said that was more about Linda's ex-husband. The Imagine album also included a postcard image of John holding a pig by the ears, an obvious parody of Paul's photo holding the ram.
Also the Ram album had a photo of 2 beetles (the insects) copulating on the back cover. Referencing something like “fucking Beatles” or how he felt the other Beatles were screwing him over at the time with all the early 70s legal and other issues.