John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s hit track ‘Imagine’ will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a special global party.
The late Beatles legend released the iconic song – as well as an album and a film by the same name – in 1971 with the help of his wife Yoko, who co-produced the record.
‘Imagine’ will turn 50 on September 9, and to celebrate the milestone Yoko and her son Sean Ono Lennon – as well as the estate of John Lennon and Universal Music Group – are hosting a global party.
Speaking about the iconic track, Yoko said: “John and I were both artists and we were living together, so we inspired each other. The song ‘Imagine’ embodied what we believed together at the time.
“John and I met – he comes from the West and I come from the East – and still we are together. We have this oneness and ‘the whole world would eventually become one’ is the sense that we will all be very happy together. All these instructions are for people for how to spend eternity, because we have lots of time.”
Among the events taking place to mark the anniversary is a watch party for the 1971 film ‘Imagine’, which was one of the first full-length conceptual music films and contains all the songs from John’s ‘Imagine’ album as well as four songs from Yoko’s ‘FLY’ record.
In 2018, under the supervision of Yoko, the film was completely reassembled in HD from the original 16mm negative reels and cleaned and digitally restored frame-by-frame with the audio completely remixed.
The watch party will begin at 7:30pm BST on September 9, and people can tune in either online, or in person at participating venues for free.
And on September 10, Capitol and Universal Music Group will release a limited collector’s edition pressing of ‘Imagine’ as a double LP on white vinyl.
The unique and expanded edition, ‘Imagine – The Ultimate Mixes & Out-takes’, includes the original demo for ‘Imagine’ alongside a host of outtakes that demonstrate the writing and recording process and showcase the evolution of the songs.
And there’s more content to come in the future, as three-dimensional Dolby Atmos mixes and full-length Stereo versions of the content in ‘Imagine – The Ultimate Collection’ will be made available on streaming services to celebrate John Lennon’s birthday this year, on October 9.