Let It Be – Imagine  | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Firstly, the inspiration behind Imagine .

Cloud Piece from Grapefruit was certainly a major influence on it, @Beatlebug. The spark for it was the gift of a Christian prayer book given to him and Yoko by American civil rights activist Dick Gregory. John described his intentions with David Sheff during the 1980 Playboy interview:

The concept of positive prayer … If you can imagine a world at peace, with no denominations of religion — not without religion but without this my God -is-bigger-than-your-God thing — then it can be true … the World Church called me once and asked, “Can we use the lyrics to ‘Imagine ‘ and just change it to ‘Imagine one religion’?” That showed they didn’t understand it at all. It would defeat the whole purpose of the song, the whole idea.

Composed, more-or-less, in one morning during early 1971, I see nothing about it that would suggest it is a response or reaction to Paul’s Let It Be . To me, it’s almost like asking whether John’s Woman  was inspired by Paul’s My Love.

It’s two years after Let It Be , and while there were elements of it John would have done differently, it certainly wasn’t a song of Paul’s that fell into that group of songs John hated. While the melodies of both have a “hymnal” quality, they are also very of their composer.

John was increasingly writing on piano, and had been since 1968. Most times he would switch his piano compositions to guitar-led recordings. In the instance of Imagine  it was always the “piano ballad”.

You make the observation, @Oudis, that Paul sings of Mother Mary while John asks us to imagine a world without division, including those caused by religion. How is John’s Utopian vision in any way a reflection on Paul’s mother appearing in his dreams to reassure him everything would be alright.

See, you seem to be making a connection between Paul’s evocation of Mother Mary, and John’s request to imagine a world not divided by religion. John was well aware that Paul’s “Mother Mary” was Paul’s mother, and not the Virgin Mary, mother of JC.

Your connection, it seems to me, only works if John believed “Mother Mary” was a religious reference from Paul, which he dismissed with his, “Imagine no religion…”

He knew Let It Be  had nothing to do with religion though, but was a son’s lament to his lost mother, and the comfort she could still bring him at his most troubled.

There is no connection between the songs lyrically, while musically the only connection is that they are both piano-led songs with a hymnal style.

Paul’s was a very personal song, while John was making another attempt at distilling what the world could do with to become a better place.

Plus, John was never shy about saying when he responding to Paul in some way, and John never even hinted at any connection.

Pablo Ramon said
Good thing Paul didn’t go with the “Brother Malcolm” iteration of the lyrics. That would have been less evocative…or evocative of something else entirely.   

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.