<p>Hunt - re what the Beatles did individually afterwards … I have to say I was never very impressed by what Lennon did solo (obviously, his life was tragically cut short). The only songs I tend to like from that are “Instant Karma,” “Whatever Gets You Through the Night,” and “Working Class Hero.” A lot of the Yoko/alternative mewling stuff really is garbage. </p>
<p>I think “Imagine” turned into an anthem / tribute because of Lennon’s horrible death, but as a song it’s overrated. It’s also very hard for me to swallow a lot of the adoration of the song “Imagine” when at the time, Lennon had basically abandoned his oldest son, Julian, even after he himself had been abandoned as a child and knew that hurt, and Lennon was also absolutely publicly vicious to McCartney and Harrison after their breakup. I don’t demand that my music idols be saints, but the hypocrisy of pretending that Lennon was all about extending peace and goodwill to people when he wasn’t is just something that personally gets to me. Give the saint award to George instead. I think a lot of history got rewritten after Lennon died and he became beatified and the other members didn’t get credit for their innovation. It was Paul who was behind all the avant-garde experimentation, the musique concrete, Sgt Pepper, and the hard rock of Helter Skelter, and it was George who was behind all the sitar / Indian music stuff, while John basically dropped LSD and wrote toss-away songs for a few years. John was far more prolific and at his best, IMO, in the earlier Beatle years.</p>