MUSIC REVIEW / FOR JOHN PARIS / FOR HIS SINGLE “IMAGINE” / REVIEW WRITTEN BY KERRY BARNES UK
#john lennon #john paris #famous pop song #solo piano arrangement by john paris #imagine #the beatles #1971 #yoko ono #white grand piano
John Lennon and Yoko Ono had been together for 3 years when this iconic song was formed in 1971. In 2017 Ono was formally recognised as co-writer in a fact not too well known. In the heads of the whole world we imagine the scene……John and Yoko goofing around with a pristine white grand piano in sight, white walls, white net curtains, almost like the white padded cells of a mental asylum. They sit at the piano, nobody knows what they’re doing…….but I know exactly what Mr. John Paris is doing!!
IMAGINE 5:14
At first I thought…..’I don’t recognise this at all?’ ……but it was John P doing what he does best, (and the late Erroll Garner in his album ‘Concert by the Sea)……giving us a long run up as a surprise before our ears prick up to a world renowned melody, loved by all who hear it. JP’s exposition is beautiful, flowery, frilly and flouncy and as light as a blown dandelion. I’m sent to a beautiful sun kissed beach where the silhouette of a darkly tanned lady, tall and willowy feels the crumbling and granular sand under her feet, as her white macrame dress moves to the shape of the breeze.
The melody comes…..it’s perfectly simplistic and rounded with good and supportive tone. Underneath, a bass pedal-note in 2nd Inversion, crossovers of chords and their relative keys hover above, something very ‘pop-cultured’. At 3:03 we are all done to go round again, now we get it!!
Some of JP’s writing here reminds me of a piano arrangement of a Diana Ross song I used to play in my youth, I remember the words….’touch me in the morning’ and it fit comfortably under the hands. Bar crossovers are at work like little flowers quickly blooming in a flash, like a sped up film you see on TV. At 4:39 a heavenly hiatus allows us to see far away in panoramic fashion and we remember from the beginning. The end is nigh.
Below you can click on the aural-delight that is Imagine arranged by John Paris.
https://open.spotify.com/album/6tz1vXejC5Rno16FR0FeTw?si=cW2XQPKFSPKAP7HCMEtg2A
