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Administrative efforts are underway to officially add Yoko Ono‘s name to the songwriting credits for John Lennon‘s 1971 classic “Imagine.”
Variety reports that the news comes out of this year’s annual meeting of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), where Ono and her son with Lennon, Sean Ono Lennon, were on hand to accept the association’s Centennial Song Award for “Imagine” on Lennon’s behalf. At the meeting, NMPA CEO David Israelite is said to have played video footage from 1980 in which Lennon said Ono’s “influence and inspiration” on the song deserved co-writing credit — and wheels are now in motion to fulfill those wishes.
As Israelite told Variety after the event, adding Ono’s name to the “Imagine” credits isn’t as simple as saying it should happen. Although it’ll be a more streamlined process due to the fact that Ono is Lennon’s widow and beneficiary — and her music publishing is managed by the same company that handles Lennon’s — there are still multiple factors to consider before it’s made official, including the fact that adding Ono will bump back the song’s entry into the public domain by decades.
Ono isn’t quoted as commenting on the decision at the ceremony, which also featured a performance of “Imagine” courtesy of Patti Smith, who sang while her daughter Jessie played piano. As Beatles fans are no doubt aware, the “Imagine” addition isn’t the first time songwriting attributions have been retroactively altered on one of the former Fab Four’s albums: In 2002, Paul McCartney made headlines — and incurred Ono’s public displeasure — when he switched the order of the longstanding “Lennon/McCartney” credit on a number of Beatles tracks performed on his Back in the U.S. concert LP.
Read More: Yoko Ono May Get a Songwriting Credit for 'Imagine' | Yoko Ono May Get a Songwriting Credit for 'Imagine'
Administrative efforts are underway to officially add Yoko Ono‘s name to the songwriting credits for John Lennon‘s 1971 classic “Imagine.”
Variety reports that the news comes out of this year’s annual meeting of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), where Ono and her son with Lennon, Sean Ono Lennon, were on hand to accept the association’s Centennial Song Award for “Imagine” on Lennon’s behalf. At the meeting, NMPA CEO David Israelite is said to have played video footage from 1980 in which Lennon said Ono’s “influence and inspiration” on the song deserved co-writing credit — and wheels are now in motion to fulfill those wishes.
As Israelite told Variety after the event, adding Ono’s name to the “Imagine” credits isn’t as simple as saying it should happen. Although it’ll be a more streamlined process due to the fact that Ono is Lennon’s widow and beneficiary — and her music publishing is managed by the same company that handles Lennon’s — there are still multiple factors to consider before it’s made official, including the fact that adding Ono will bump back the song’s entry into the public domain by decades.
Ono isn’t quoted as commenting on the decision at the ceremony, which also featured a performance of “Imagine” courtesy of Patti Smith, who sang while her daughter Jessie played piano. As Beatles fans are no doubt aware, the “Imagine” addition isn’t the first time songwriting attributions have been retroactively altered on one of the former Fab Four’s albums: In 2002, Paul McCartney made headlines — and incurred Ono’s public displeasure — when he switched the order of the longstanding “Lennon/McCartney” credit on a number of Beatles tracks performed on his Back in the U.S. concert LP.
Read More: Yoko Ono May Get a Songwriting Credit for 'Imagine' | Yoko Ono May Get a Songwriting Credit for 'Imagine'
